During the pandemic, Beike Biotech also actively participated in tackling technical challenges. The clinical research on mesenchymal stem cell therapy for critically ill COVID-19 patients, jointly carried out with multiple medical institutions in Yunnan, has produced milestone results, with the article "Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Combination with Antiviral and Other Methods for the Treatment of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia" published.
The article hypothesizes that human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells may benefit COVID-19 patients mainly via the following mechanisms:
(1) Homing to and repair of damaged tissues, mainly possibly through the secretion of factors that promote tissue regeneration;
(2) Suppression of inflammatory responses, mainly possibly through secretion of inflammation-suppressing factors and the neutralizing effect of expressed receptors for IL-6, G-CSF and other inflammatory cytokines;
(3) These effects together provide a favorable environment for the decline of neutrophils and the proliferation of lymphocytes.
Combined with previous results from the authors and other groups, the authors of the paper believe that umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells have important application prospects in treating severe and critical COVID-19 patients.
In treating severe COVID-19 patients, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have played an important role thanks to their strong immunomodulatory function and ability to improve the body's microenvironment, becoming a hot research area in biomedicine. Multiple authoritative news outlets have reported on the progress of MSC clinical research in severe COVID-19 patients (click for details).
In addition, in March 2020, the project "Clinical Research on Treating Severe Pneumonia Caused by Coronavirus with Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells", jointly applied for by Beike Biotech and the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen (Shenzhen's only designated hospital for receiving COVID-19 patients), received approval under the Guangdong Department of Science and Technology's 2020 Guangdong Emergency Special Project on Scientific and Technological Tackling for the Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus (click for details). Multiple clinical trials of mesenchymal stem cells for COVID-19 have also been carried out in China and abroad (click for details).
With ongoing research, mesenchymal stem cells have been applied in treatment research for many intractable diseases. Now, in the face of the novel coronavirus, mesenchymal stem cells have once again shown excellent performance in the treatment of critical novel coronavirus pneumonia, playing an important role in this antiviral campaign. We have every reason to believe that mesenchymal stem cells will be able to contribute their strength in still more areas in the future.
