Israeli cancer treatment cures COVID in all patients in Phase 1 trial

Dr. Nadir Arber in his lab where EXO-CD24 was developed. Photo courtesy of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

I hadn’t seen this diaried so I thought I’d pass it along. An experimental Israeli cancer treatment cured all patients in a Phase 1 Clinical Trial.

“To date, the preparation has been tried with great success on 30 severe patients, in 29 of whom the medical condition improved within two to three days and most of them were discharged home within three to five days. The 30th patient also recovered but after a longer time,” the hospital reports.

“The drug is based on exosomes, [vesicles] that are released from the cell membrane and used for intercellular communication. We enrich the exosomes with 24CD protein. This protein is expressed on the surface of the cell and has a known and important role in regulating the immune system,” explained Dr. Shiran Shapira, director of the laboratory of Prof. Nadir Arber, who has been researching the CD24 protein for over two decades.

This treatment works by preventing the cytokine storm (great band name) which overheats the immune system. While we obviously favor a preventative rather than a cure, I would be very interested to see this treatment tried on people who have “recovered” from COVID but are still displaying symptoms. While the treatment is experimental:

Arber added that this advanced preparation “can be produced quickly and efficiently and at a very low cost in every pharmaceutical facility in the country, and in a short time globally.”

Emphasis mine. This is great news as far as I’m concerned. More ways to fight COVID and with Biden transitioning Operation Worm Speed into Operation Warp Speed, hopefully the end of this pandemic is coming sooner rather than later.