Israeli ‘wonder cure’ saves patients from brink of death

ISRAELI scientists are nearing completion of a “wonder cure” that can bring 70 per cent of severe Covid patients back from the brink of death and speed up recovery from the disease.

The treatment, MesenCure, is a form of cell therapy that injects healthy cells into the body which then ease extreme inflammation of the lungs, the most severe symptom of coronavirus.

This week the treatment finished phase two of the clinical trial process and its inventors hope it will soon be approved for emergency use in Israel and potentially in Britain.

“You inject living cells into the body derived from the tissue of a healthy donor, and like that we can obtain doses for tens of thousands of patients,” Tomer Bronshtein, head of research at Bonus BioGroup, said.

The cells were in effect trained to recognise inflammation, he said, because before treatment they were placed in a lab culture that mimicked the conditions they would encounter in a Covid patient’s body.

“These cells can sense their environment and they start secreting a variety of proteins that inhibit or suppress the inflammation. It suppresses the cytokine storm, the hyper immune response triggered by Covid-19,” he said.

Data from phase two of clinical trials, which involved 50 patients with severe Covid, showed that 70 per cent survived after receiving several doses of MesenCure. The treatment also cut the amount of time spent in hospital by half.

MesenCure is one of several treatments in development that could cut death rates and the amount of time spent in hospitals. Among them is AlloCetra, which reported a similar success rate in preventing the deaths of hospitalised Covid patients with severe symptoms.