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World J Stem Cells. May 26, 2021; 13(5): 439-451
Published online May 26, 2021. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v13.i5.439
Different kinds of stem cells in the development of SARS-CoV-2 treatments
Monica Maribel Mata-Miranda, Miguel Sanchez-Brito, Gustavo Jesus Vazquez-Zapien
Monica Maribel Mata-Miranda, Cell and Tissue Biology Laboratory, Escuela Militar de Medicina, Mexico 11200, Mexico
Miguel Sanchez-Brito, Computational Sciences, TecNM/Technological Institute of Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes 20256, Mexico
Gustavo Jesus Vazquez-Zapien, Embryology Laboratory, Escuela Militar de Medicina, Mexico 11200, Mexico
Author contributions: Mata-Miranda MM and Vazquez-Zapien GJ designed, wrote, and reviewed the paper; Sanchez-Brito M wrote and revised the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Gustavo Jesus Vazquez-Zapien, MD, PhD, Doctor, Professor, Embryology Laboratory, Escuela Militar de Medicina, Cerrada de Palomas S/N, Mexico 11200, Mexico. gus1202@hotmail.com
Received: January 16, 2021
Peer-review started: January 16, 2021
First decision: February 14, 2021
Revised: February 27, 2021
Accepted: April 22, 2021
Article in press: April 22, 2021
Published online: May 26, 2021
Abstract

On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially announced the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), as an emerging recent pandemic illness, which currently has approximately taken the life of two million persons in more than 200 countries. Medical, clinical, and scientific efforts have focused on searching for new prevention and treatment strategies. Regenerative medicine and tissue engineering focused on using stem cells (SCs) have become a promising tool, and the regenerative and immunoregulatory capabilities of mesenchymal SCs (MSCs) and their exosomes have been demonstrated. Moreover, it has been essential to establishing models to reproduce the viral life cycle and mimic the pathology of COVID-19 to understand the virus's behavior. The fields of pluripotent SCs (PSCs), induced PSCs (iPSCs), and artificial iPSCs have been used for this purpose in the development of infection models or organoids. Nevertheless, some inconveniences have been declared in SC use; for example, it has been reported that SARS-CoV-2 enters human cells through the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor, which is highly expressed in MSCs, so it is important to continue investigating the employment of SCs in COVID-19, taking into consideration their advantages and disadvantages. In this review, we expose the use of different kinds of SCs and their derivatives for studying the SARS-CoV-2 behavior and develop treatments to counter COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Stem cells, Exosomes, Pluripotent stem cells, Mesenchymal stem cells, Artificial stem cells

Core Tip: The use of stem cells (SCs) to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been widely studied in various fields; for example, human embryonic SCs and human induced pluripotent SCs have been used to generate functional human cells, tissues, and organoids that are used for modeling COVID-19 and discovering drugs. Mesenchymal SCs and their exosomes have been used in clinical trials to control the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 immune response, showing absorption of pulmonary lesions and clinical improvement.