Genes Transfer is the Main Process for Prediction of a Drug or Vaccine Against SARS-C0V-2

Gene transfer is emerging as a method for a rapid response to the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Both experimental therapeutic solutions and vaccines are subject to preclinical and in some clinical cases. Many of these approaches make use of gene transfer techniques that, especially vaccines, allow a faster initial development pathway than conventional approaches. The unprecedented urgency of this global crisis may cause these antiviral drugs and genetic vaccines, if safe and effective, to be spread on a larger scale than anything else will be available for all people. Depending on the regulatory approval pathway, it may also happen at a pace never seen before in drug development as a result of gene transfer. Hopefully, in the coming days, the clinical trials of will end and the vaccines become available everywhere.

Aurora: a new direction for a new dawn

The use of gene transfer techniques to introduce TCR α/β genes that confer specificity for a target antigen offers the opportunity to produce large numbers of cancer-specific T cells for adoptive therapy.1 In this issue of Blood, Nagai and colleagues examine the feasibility of adoptive therapy using lymphocytes genetically engineered to express the T-cell receptor (TCR) for the leukemia-associated antigen Aurora kinase A (AURKA).2

Gene Therapy in the Management of Erectile Dysfunction (ED): Past, Present, and Future

In the past, many researchers considered viral vectors to be the most promising candidates to transfer genetic material into the corpora for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. However, at present, no viral vectors have progressed to human trials. In contrast, the use of naked gene therapy, a plasmid expressing the human Maxi-K potassium channel, is the only gene therapy treatment to be evaluated in clinical phase I trials to date. The success of these studies, proving the safety of this treatment, has paved the way for the development of future gene transfer techniques based on similar transfer methods, as well as novel treatment vectors, such as stem cell transfer.