Editorial: Molecular Mechanisms of Pathogen-Driven Infectious and Neoplastic Diseases

摘要

I would like to start this Editorial by quoting a couple of sentences from the article “Multiple Network-Based Approaches to Identify a Key Regulator of Non-lethal Infections” by Mitchell et al. published in this Research Topic. “Viruses that are newly introduced to the human population have the potential to be highly pathogenic. While the pathogenicity of these new strains tends to wane as adaptation progresses, emerging viruses are an ever-present threat to human health and the global economy because it is difficult to predict when a new pathogenic strain will appear.” When we started discussing about editing a special issue to highlight how pathogens may not only cause infectious diseases, but also contribute to cancer, we would have never imagined that, shortly after, a new pathogen, COVID-19, would emerge, causing a pandemic of biblical proportion and resulting in so many deaths and much grief. COVID-19 quickly became the most intensively studied pathogen as the scientific community worldwide raced to discover effective preventive and therapeutic measures. Three articles published in this Research Topic focus on this new coronavirus and highlight its mechanism of infection (“The mechanisms and animal models of SARS-CoV-2 infection,” by Jia et al.), neurological complications observed in infected patients (“Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2-Induced Neurological Complications,” by Yu and Yu), and explore the possible use of curcumin to counteract the cytokine storm induced by this virus, which seems to contribute to the severity of signs and symptoms experienced by infected individuals (“The Inhibitory Effect of Curcumin on Virus-Induced Cytokine Storm and Its Potential Use in the Associated Severe Pneumonia,” by Liu and Ying). However, inflammation is a key response to all pathogens and, if aberrantly activated, can be harmful and predispose to severe diseases. This crucial aspect is investigated in “Microbes as Master Immunomodulators: Immunopathology, Cancer and Personalized Immunotherapies,” by Lérias et al. in which the association of certain human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles with a strong pro-inflammatory response and increased susceptibility to development of specific cancer types in the settings of a pathogenic infection is nicely unraveled. The role of an excessive inflammatory response is further investigated in “LncRNA MALAT1 Affects Mycoplasma pneumoniae Pneumonia via NF-κB Regulation,” by Gu et al. in which the Authors illustrate how down-regulation of the lncRNA MALAT-1, which is linked with an excessive inflammatory response, may reduce pulmonary inflammation caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae.