PERTH, Australia – Australian stem cell therapy company Mesoblast Ltd. announced that the FDA gave it the green light to test its allogeneic mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) product candidate remestemcel-L in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) caused by coronavirus (COVID-19). “We’re going to be evaluating whether an injection of our cells intravenously can tone down the immune system just enough so it gets rid of the virus but doesn’t destroy your lungs at the same time,” Mesoblast CEO Silviu Itescu told BioWorld.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Acumen Research Laboratories, Allurion Technologies, Almac Clinical Technologies, Artms Products, Beam Therapeutics, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Biotricity, Cure Pharmaceutical, Getinge, Imaginab, Invitae, Ivwatch, James Fisher, The Janz, Medipines, Mesa Biotech, Mirion, Nano-X, Oklahoma State University, Qure.ai, OGT, Parallax, Rapid Medical, United Global Alliance, Vortran, Xerox.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Cochlear, Genetron, Gnomegen, Motus GI, Nitiloop, Orthosensor.
Keeping you up to date on recent developments in oncology, including: Technetium crunch resurfaces as COVID-19 roils the globe; Microbiome changes precede tumor development in CRC; Il-27 proposed as target in prostate cancer.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: 3M, Boston Scientific, Gnomogen, Viracor Eurofins Clinical Diagnostics.
Pluristem Therapeutics Inc., an Israeli regenerative medicine company, said several of the seven COVID-19 patients treated with its allogeneic placental expanded (PLX) cells have progressed from suffering severe symptoms of the disease to signs of clinical recovery, including respiratory improvements.
“In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again... The first point is more pressing, but the second has crucial long-term consequences.” So wrote Bill Gates in a February editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine about COVID-19, which “has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”
Evercore ISI assembled a dozen internal specialists for a webinar to talk about COVID-19 from a variety of perspectives, with opinions aplenty on transmission route, up-and-coming treatment prospects, and problems in how testing procedures are understood – or not.
As the demand increases for ventilators to treat Americans with severe symptoms of COVID-19, another shortage is being exacerbated – a shortage of the drugs needed to treat patients on ventilators.
LONDON – COVID-19 is posing a real threat to the viability of medical charities in the U.K., which collectively fund 17,000 scientists and invest more than £1.3 billion (US$1.6 billion) per annum in research.
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