The pharmacological efficacy of the anti-IL17 scFv and sTNFR1 bispecific fusion protein in inflammation mouse stimulated by LPS

Recent progress and prospects for anti-cytokine therapy in preclinical and clinical acute lung injury

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a heterogeneous cause of respiratory failure that has a rapid onset, a high mortality rate, and for which there is no effective pharmacological treatment. Current evidence supports a critical role of excessive inflammation in ARDS, resulting in several cytokines, cytokine receptors, and proteins within their downstream signalling pathways being putative therapeutic targets. However, unsuccessful trials of anti-inflammatory drugs have thus far hindered progress in the field. In recent years, the prospects of precision medicine and therapeutic targeting of cytokines coevolving into effective treatments have gained notoriety. There is an optimistic and growing understanding of ARDS subphenotypes as well as advances in treatment strategies and clinical trial design. Furthermore, large trials of anti-cytokine drugs in patients with COVID-19 have provided an unprecedented amount of information that could pave the way for therapeutic breakthroughs. While current clinical and nonclinical ARDS research suggest relatively limited potential in monotherapy with anti-cytokine drugs, combination therapy has emerged as an appealing strategy and may provide new perspectives on finding safe and effective treatments. Accurate evaluation of these drugs, however, also relies on well-founded experimental research and the implementation of biomarker-guided stratification in future trials. In this review, we provide an overview of anti-cytokine therapy for acute lung injury and ARDS, highlighting the current preclinical and clinical evidence for targeting the main cytokines individually and the therapeutic prospects for combination therapy.

Designing a new bispecific tandem single-chain variable fragment antibody against tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-23 using in silico studies for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis disease is a chronic auto-immune inflammatory disease that mainly causes synovial joint inflammation and cartilage destruction. The tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) is a pivotal cytokine that plays an important role in rheumatoid arthritis. The treatments focusing on a single cytokine inhibition are clinically able to produce meaningful responses in only about half of the treated patients due to multiple cytokines involved in this disease. In the present study, a bispecific tandem single-chain variable fragment was designed in order to suppress both human tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-23 (IL23) as a potential therapeutic drug candidate for this disease. To do so, at first, eight bispecific tandem single-chain variable fragment models were built against tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-23 cytokines with different domain orders by the homology modeling, and then 50 ns molecular dynamics simulation was performed for each one and then structural properties were exploited. The MD simulation results indicate the fact that the domains' order strongly affects tandem single-chain variable fragment properties, and in overall, the fragment V_LAIL23+Linker+V_HAIL23+linker+V_LATNF+Linker +V_HATNF +His6 (V_L and V_H are light and heavy chain variable fragments and AIL23 and ATNF are anti-interleukin 23 and anti-tumor necrosis factor-α, respectively, and His6 is the six histidine) not only separated antibody domains accurately but also had better stability and solvation free energy. Therefore, this structure can be considered as an effective potential drug for rheumatoid arthritis. It is expected that the findings of this research could shed a light on the treatment approaches of the rheumatoid arthritis disease.