Inspiration
The new coronavirus 2019-nCoV SARS-CoV- 2 or HCoV-19 outbreak had emerged from Wuhan, China in December 2019. To date, there is no specific treatment or vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 and it is still a long way off. Thus, it is an urgent need to potential agents against SARS-CoV-2. To the best of our knowledge, there are no other teams working on the concept of Convalescent secretome/exosome (CS/E) therapy. There are some groups working towards Convalescent plasma (CP) therapy. Experimental studies have demonstrated that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and their exosomes (MSCs-Exo) significantly reduced lung inflammation and pathological impairment. In another approach, human derived bone marrow MSCs have been safely administered in patients with Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and septic shock (phase I/II trials), it seems safer to deliver MSCs-Exo rather than actual MSCs. Already, an approved pilot clinical studies on nasal delivery of MSCs-Exo (NCT04276987) treating severe novel coronavirus pneumonia.
The proposed CS/E therapeutic platform will be achieved within a matter of months and has a target cost of less than existing (compared to current plasma and vaccine therapy), and will thus have an important impact in medicine, as well as on the pandemic situation. Such treatments are highly desired to minimize hospitalization and the need for ventilator.
What it does
How I built it
Challenges I ran into
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
What I learned
What's next for Convalescent secretome/exosome (CS/E) therapy
The pre-clinical and clinical trials are needed to confirm our approach. Perhaps, it is necessary to provide us the initial funding to proceed and then expert connections and seeking technical help.
References 1.Dinh, P.U.C., Paudel, D., Brochu, H., Popowski, K.D., Gracieux, M.C., Cores, J., Huang, K., Hensley, M.T., Harrell, E., Vandergriff, A.C. and George, A.K., 2020. Inhalation of lung spheroid cell secretome and exosomes promotes lung repair in pulmonary fibrosis. Nature communications, 11(1), pp.1-14.
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