Search

There is pressing urgency to identify drugs that allow treating COVID-19 patients effectively. Respiratory failure is the leading cause of death in patients with severe COVID-19, and the host inflammatory response at the lungs remains poorly understood. Therefore, we retrieved data from postmortem lungs from COVID-19 patients and performed in-depth in silico analyses of single-nucleus RNA sequencing data, inflammatory protein interactome network, functional enrichment, and shortest pathways to cancer hallmark phenotypes to reveal potential therapeutic targets and drugs in advanced-stage COVID-19 clinical trials. Herein, we analyzed transcriptomics data of 719 inflammatory response genes across 19 cell types (116,313 nuclei) from lung autopsies. The functional enrichment analysis of the 233 significantly expressed genes showed that the most relevant biological annotations were: inflammatory response, innate immune response, cytokine production, interferon production, macrophage activation, thymic stromal lymphopoietin, blood coagulation, IL-1 and megakaryocytes in obesity, NLRP3 inflammasome complex, and the TLR, JAK-STAT, NF-κB, TNF, oncostatin M, AGE-RAGE signaling pathways. Subsequently, we identified 34 essential inflammatory proteins with both high-confidence protein interactions and shortest pathways to inflammation, cell death, glycolysis, and angiogenesis. Lastly, we propose five small molecules involved in advanced-stage COVID-19 clinical trials: baricitinib, pacritinib, and ruxolitinib are tyrosine-protein kinase JAK2 inhibitors, losmapimod is a MAP kinase p38 alpha inhibitor, and eritoran is a TLR4/MD-2 antagonist. After being thoroughly analyzed in COVID-19 clinical trials, these drugs can be considered for treating severe COVID-19 patients.

Breast cancer is one of the most frequent malignancies among women worldwide. Methods for screening and diagnosis allow health care professionals to provide personalized treatments that improve the outcome and survival. Scientists and physicians are working side-by-side to develop evidence-based guidelines and equipment to detect cancer earlier. However, the lack of comprehensive interdisciplinary information and understanding between biomedical, medical, and technology professionals makes innovation of new screening and diagnosis tools difficult. This critical review gathers, for the first time, information concerning normal breast and cancer biology, established and emerging methods for screening and diagnosis, staging and grading, molecular and genetic biomarkers. Our purpose is to address key interdisciplinary information about these methods for physicians and scientists. Only the multidisciplinary interaction and communication between scientists, health care professionals, technical experts and patients will lead to the development of better detection tools and methods for an improved screening and early diagnosis.