The Supply Brain

Immune Cell-based Therapies for COVID-19: Current Clinical Trial Landscape Data

One element of COVID-19 is a hyper-response of the patient’s immune system, which in turn leads to lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome.¹ At the same time, appropriate immune response is decreased due to immune evasion by the virus. ^1,2 Treatment with immune cell-based adoptive therapies is being investigated to combat inflammation to fight SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., T regulatory and NK cells).² Here, we review the current clinical trial landscape utilizing immune cell-based therapies.

MSC-Based Therapies for COVID-19: Current Clinical Trial Landscape Data

Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) are emerging as a potential treatment modality for COVID-19^1-3. MSCs have immunomodulatory properties that can be used to combat the inflammatory response caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approvals to several MSC-based clinical trials for COVID-19. This brief blog post summarizes the current MSC COVID-19 clinical trial landscape based on data from clinicaltrials.gov.

In late 2019, cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) began to emerge out of Wuhan, China. Since then, the disease has proven to be highly contagious and has rapidly spread around the world, becoming a global pandemic. COVID-19 is caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Conoravirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). SARS-CoV-2 attacks host cells by the binding of its spike protein to the angiotensin I converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on cell membranes (1). ACE2 receptors are primarily found on lung alveolar type II cells and capillary endothelial cells in the lungs, which helps to explain the prevalence of respiratory distress associated with COVID-19 (2). In addition to the lungs, ACE2 receptors have also been identified in the heart, liver, kidney, and digestive organs which may help to explain why severe COVID-19 patients display myocardial injury, arrhythmia, acute kidney injury, shock, and death from multiple organ dysfunction/failure (1).