Publications by authors named "Catala A"

Background: Allogeneic haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation is the standard treatment for bone marrow failure (BMF) in patients with Fanconi anaemia, but transplantation-associated complications such as an increased incidence of subsequent cancer are frequent. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the infusion of autologous gene-corrected haematopoietic stem cells as an alternative therapy for these patients.

Methods: This was an open-label, investigator-initiated phase 1/2 clinical trial (FANCOLEN-1) and long-term follow-up trial (up to 7 years post-treatment) in Spain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how emerging viruses can disrupt global systems, exacerbated by factors like dense populations and environmental changes.
  • Vaccines are critical in fighting outbreaks, and researchers have created a vaccine platform that can showcase multiple viral antigens simultaneously.
  • This advanced platform uses engineered proteins to enhance vaccine effectiveness in mice, demonstrating the potential for quick development of vaccines for various infectious diseases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Fanconi anemia (FA) is a rare genetic disorder marked by varying symptoms and significant chromosome fragility, leading to severe health issues like cancer and bone marrow failure.
  • The Spanish Registry of Patients with FA gathered data from 227 patients over 30 years, revealing an 86% cumulative cancer incidence by age 50, with outcomes differing based on chromosome fragility and specific gene mutations.
  • Findings suggest that patients with mutations allowing some protein function (genetic hypomorphism) tend to have better health outcomes, indicating potential for new therapies that could enhance mutant FA protein function to improve patient prognosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of CAR-T is becoming more widespread in the treatment of haematological malignancies. In adults, secondary myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) after CAR-T have been described. However, there are currently no data on the risk of MDS following CAR-T in children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Patients heterozygous for germline CBL loss-of-function (LOF) variants can develop myeloid malignancy, autoinflammation, or both, if some or all of their leukocytes become homozygous for these variants through somatic loss of heterozygosity (LOH) via uniparental isodisomy. We observed an upregulation of the inflammatory gene expression signature in whole blood from these patients, mimicking monogenic inborn errors underlying autoinflammation. Remarkably, these patients had constitutively activated monocytes that secreted 10 to 100 times more inflammatory cytokines than those of healthy individuals and CBL LOF heterozygotes without LOH.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is increasing in Spain. Suppurative STIs are one of the most frequent reasons for consultation in specialized centers. The reason for suppurative STIs is multiple and their empirical treatment varies with the currently growing problem of antimicrobial resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Frailty is a geriatric syndrome characterized by increased individual vulnerability with an increase in both dependence and mortality when exposed to external stressors. The use of Frailty Indices in routine clinical practice is limited by several factors, such as the cognitive status of the patient, times of consultation, or lack of prior information from the patient.

Objectives: In this study, we propose the generation of an objective measure of frailty, based on the signal from hand grip strength (HGS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • This study introduces a promising approach for gene therapy in Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA), focusing on patients with mutations in the RPS19 gene and demonstrating a safe and effective treatment method.
  • Unlike Fanconi anemia, DBA patients have a healthy reserve of hematopoietic stem cells, making them suitable candidates for this therapy without significant complications.
  • Two novel lentiviral vectors were developed to deliver RPS19, showing successful restoration of red blood cell development in lab experiments, along with confirming safety and potential long-term benefits in hematopoietic cell function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Defective signaling of the FAS molecule, linked to autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS), leads to hypergammaglobulinemia and fewer conventional memory B cells due to disrupted B cell differentiation.
  • Analysis of ALPS patients revealed low memory B cell numbers, fewer germinal center B cells, and an expanded extrafollicular B cell response, indicating a shift in B cell fate.
  • The study proposes that abnormal non-apoptotic FAS signaling affects the mTOR pathway and gene expression, contributing to the altered B cell responses observed in ALPS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia (JMML) is a type of cancer that occurs in children and is linked to problems with certain genes in the RAS pathway.
  • Kids with a condition called neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF-1) are more likely to get JMML because of a faulty NF1 gene they inherit.
  • The study looked at 25 JMML patients, finding different types of NF1 gene problems and suggesting that testing for NF1 gene issues is important even if patients don’t show signs of NF-1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)T-cell CD19 therapy is an effective treatment for relapsed/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It can be associated with life-threatening toxicities which often require PICU admission. Purpose: to describe clinical characteristics, treatment and outcome of these patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite the large number of articles published on skin lesions related to COVID-19, clinicopathological correlation has not been performed consistently and immunohistochemistry to demonstrate spike 3 protein expression has not been validated through RT-PCR.

Material And Methods: We compiled 69 cases of patients with confirmed COVID-19, where skin lesions were clinically and histopathologically studied. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and RT-PCR was performed in skin biopsies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) is a reliable tool for detecting gene fusions in acute leukemia. Multiple bioinformatics pipelines have been developed to analyze RNA-seq data, but an agreed gold standard has not been established. This study aimed to compare the applicability of 5 fusion calling pipelines (Arriba, deFuse, CICERO, FusionCatcher, and STAR-Fusion), as well as to define and develop an integrative bioinformatics pipeline (Fusion InPipe) to detect clinically relevant gene fusions in acute pediatric leukemia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To ensure sustainable agricultural management, there is a need not only to quantify soil erosion rates but also to obtain information on the status of soil water content and soil loss under different soil types and land uses. A clear understanding of the temporal dynamics and the soil moisture spatial variability (SMSV) will help to control soil degradation by hydrological processes. This study represents the first attempt connecting cosmic-ray neutron sensors (CRNS) with soil erosion research, a novel approach to explore the complex relationships between soil water content (SWC) and soil redistribution processes using two of the most powerful nuclear techniques, CRNS and fallout Cs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite the large number of articles published on skin lesions related to COVID-19, clinicopathological correlation has not been performed consistently and immunohistochemistry to demonstrate spike 3 protein expression has not been validated through RT-PCR.

Material And Methods: We compiled 69 cases of patients with confirmed COVID-19, where skin lesions were clinically and histopathologically studied. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and RT-PCR was performed in skin biopsies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Intracranial aneurysms (IA) are a focal dilatation of the vessel wall, the rupture of these, causes subarachnoid hemorrhage. Until now, endovascular management is the ideal treatment, providing the interventionist a range of options among which the stent and coils embolization stands out because of its occlusion rate. This study presents the results of a retrospective cohort comparing the effectiveness, morbidity, and mortality of IA treatment with laser-cut stent-assisted coils versus braided stents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In light of the ongoing freshwater biodiversity crisis, detailed knowledge regarding the spatial distribution of freshwater species is urgently required, especially in biodiversity hotspots. Here we present a database of georeferenced occurrence records of four freshwater invertebrate taxa groups across Cuba, namely flatworms (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida), insects (Ephemeroptera, Odonata, Hemiptera, Trichoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera), crabs and shrimps (Crustacea: Decapoda), and mollusks (Mollusca). We collated the geographic occurrence information from scientific literature, unpublished field records, museum collections and online databases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Clinical and biological factors, including genetic mutations at diagnosis and measurable residual disease (MRD) levels, are key in predicting outcomes for pediatric leukemia.
  • A new model incorporating genetic abnormalities, transcriptional identity, and a leukaemic stem cell score (pLSC6) aims to identify high-risk pediatric acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients, though the impact of epigenetics is still uncertain.
  • A study discovered a 24-miRNA signature that accurately predicts outcomes for pediatric AML patients, which, when combined with traditional prognostic factors, provides a more comprehensive risk assessment than using any single factor alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mpox is an emerging zoonotic disease that has spread rapidly around the world. It has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. This review is an update for dermatologists on the epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and treatment of Mpox.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The current monkeypox disease (MPX) outbreak constitutes a new threat and challenge for our society. With more than 55,000 confirmed cases in 103 countries, World Health Organization declared the ongoing MPX outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on July 23, 2022. The current MPX outbreak is the largest, most widespread, and most serious since the diagnosis of the first case of MPX in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country where MPX is an endemic disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Since May 2022, a new outbreak of monkeypox has been reported in several countries, including Spain. The clinical and epidemiological characteristics of the cases in this outbreak may differ from those in earlier reports.

Objectives: To document the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of cases of monkeypox in the current outbreak.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A monkeypox (MPX) outbreak has expanded worldwide since May 2022. We tested 147 clinical samples collected at different time points from 12 patients by real-time PCR. MPX DNA was detected in saliva from all cases, sometimes with high viral loads.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Biological therapeutics represent an increasing and critical component of newly approved drugs; however, the inability to deliver biologics intracellularly in a controlled manner remains a major limitation. We have developed a semi-synthetic, tunable phage-like particle (PLP) platform derived from bacteriophage λ. The shell surface can be decorated with small-molecule, biological and synthetic moieties, alone or in combination and in defined ratios.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF