Copyright
©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Thymosin alpha 1: A comprehensive review of the literature
Asimina Dominari, Donald Hathaway III, Krunal Pandav, Wanessa Matos, Sharmi Biswas, Gowry Reddy, Sindhu Thevuthasan, Muhammad Adnan Khan, Anoopa Mathew, Sarabjot Singh Makkar, Madiha Zaidi, Michael Maher Mourad Fahem, Renato Beas, Valeria Castaneda, Trissa Paul, John Halpern, Diana Baralt, Division of Research and Academic Affairs, Larkin Health System, South Miami, FL 33143, United States
Author contributions: Dominari A, Hathaway D, and Pandav K contributed equally to this study; Dominari A, Hathaway D, and Pandav K contributed to study conception and design; Dominari A, Hathaway D, and Pandav K supervised the manuscript; Baralt D and Halpern J provided critical reviews; all authors wrote the original manuscript; all authors assisted in editing the manuscript; all authors had final approval of the article to be published.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests 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: Donald Hathaway III, BSc, Division of Research and Academic Affairs, Larkin Health System, 7032 SW 62nd Avenue, South Miami, FL 33143, United States. donald.hathaway@larkinhospital.com
Received: October 13, 2020
Peer-review started: October 13, 2020
First decision: November 18, 2020
Revised: November 19, 2020
Accepted: December 2, 2020
Article in press: December 2, 2020
Published online: December 15, 2020
Peer-review started: October 13, 2020
First decision: November 18, 2020
Revised: November 19, 2020
Accepted: December 2, 2020
Article in press: December 2, 2020
Published online: December 15, 2020
Core Tip
Core Tip: Thymosin alpha 1 is a naturally occurring peptide in the human thymus, which has long been recognized for its immune-modulating properties. The synthetic analog of thymosin alpha 1 has various clinical applications, such as in infectious diseases, malignancies and in immunocompromised states. There is emerging data postulating that this peptide could be of benefit in the treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 infection. We herein discuss the underlying knowledge, current clinical uses and results of recent studies of thymosin alpha 1.