CARTAR: a comprehensive web tool for identifying potential targets in chimeric antigen receptor therapies using TCGA and GTEx data.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy has emerged as a ground-breaking advancement in cancer treatment, harnessing the power of engineered human immune cells to target and eliminate cancer cells. The escalating interest and investment in CAR therapy in recent years emphasize its profound significance in clinical research, positioning it as a rapidly expanding frontier in the field of personalized cancer therapies. A crucial step in CAR therapy design is choosing the right target as it determines the therapy's effectiveness, safety and specificity against cancer cells, while sparing healthy tissues. Herein, we propose a suite of tools for the identification and analysis of potential CAR targets leveraging expression data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Genotype-Tissue Expression Project, which are implemented in CARTAR website. These tools focus on pinpointing tumor-associated antigens, ensuring target selectivity and assessing specificity to avoid off-tumor toxicities and can be used to rationally designing dual CARs. In addition, candidate target expression can be explored in cancer cell lines using the expression data for the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia. To our best knowledge, CARTAR is the first website dedicated to the systematic search of suitable candidate targets for CAR therapy. CARTAR is publicly accessible at https://gmxenomica.github.io/CARTAR/.

Biomechanical in silico evaluation of a 3D novel total hip implant with cemented fixation using finite elements.

This paper presents the biomechanical evaluation of a proposed replacement implant for a total hip arthroplasty considering both the effect of the material and using a numerical tool. The use of titanium, alumina, polycarbonate urethane (PCU), and nitride titanium allows the manufacture of a cemented hip prosthesis with better resistance to corrosion, greater biocompatibility, greater mechanical resistance for physiological conditions, and does not present plastic deformation. This article provides an analysis of biomaterials and adequate geometries for a total hip prosthesis, with the aim of finding the optimal model, thus avoiding complications such as loosening or fatigue that current models present. Ultimately, the proposed design of the prosthesis was modeled using finite elements, simulating the static loads to which the prosthesis is subjected and evaluating the chosen biomaterials. Clinical Relevance - Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease that affects 20% of the population above 60 years of age, particularly the hip joint, which is why, in most cases, a total arthroplasty of the expressed joint is required. In this procedure, the hip is replaced with an implant, which failure is usually related with either geometrical conditions or selected materials. An exponential increase of 136% in the incidence of total hip arthroplasty is expected by 2030.

Experimental Models to Study Autism Spectrum Disorders: hiPSCs, Rodents and Zebrafish.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) affect around 1.5% of the global population, which manifest alterations in communication and socialization, as well as repetitive behaviors or restricted interests. ASD is a complex disorder with known environmental and genetic contributors; however, ASD etiology is far from being clear. In the past decades, many efforts have been put into developing new models to study ASD, both in vitro and in vivo. These models have a lot of potential to help to validate some of the previously associated risk factors to the development of the disorder, and to test new potential therapies that help to alleviate ASD symptoms. The present review is focused on the recent advances towards the generation of models for the study of ASD, which would be a useful tool to decipher the bases of the disorder, as well as to conduct drug screenings that hopefully lead to the identification of useful compounds to help patients deal with the symptoms of ASD.