COVID-19 Thread 4/24/2020 (Australian Company Claims “Remarkable” Success with Stem Cell Treatment)

A Melbourne-based medicine company called Mesoblast has published a press release in which it claims that COVID-19 patients on ventilator support have responded very well to being treated with their product remestemcel-L, which they describe as an “allogeneic cell therapy”. The treatment is usually used to treat disease in people who have had bone marrow transplants, and is being used to treat COVID-19 patients on a compassionate use basis.

From the press release:

Key points:

• 83% survival in ventilator-dependent COVID-19 patients (10/12) with moderate/severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) treated with two infusions of Mesoblast’s allogeneic cell therapy remestemcel-L within the first five days under emergency compassionate use at New York City’s Mt Sinai hospital during the period March-April 2020

• 75% (9/12) have successfully come off ventilator support within a median of 10 days

• These results contrast with only 9% of ventilator-dependent COVID-19 patients being able to come off
ventilators with standard of care treatment and only 12% survival in ventilator-dependent COVID-19 patients at two major referral hospital networks in New York during the same time period

• This compassionate use treatment experience has informed the design of the clinical protocol for the
randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 2/3 trial of remestemcel-L in ventilator-dependent COVID-19
moderate/severe ARDS patients across North America

http://investorsmedia.mesoblast.com/static-files/337e723a-340d-493e-a4a1-0971d2c71460