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Crioestaminal announced on Friday that it had completed development of an experimental drug based on expanded umbilical cord stem cells to treat more severe patients with covid-19, which is available for hospital use.
Headquartered in Biocant Park in Cantanhede, the company already has the first batch of the experimental drug (SLCTmsc02) ready, paving the way for its use as an experimental treatment in a hospital setting.
“Experimental medicine appears as a therapeutic solution to treat patients with covid-19 in a serious situation. The use of this type of cell is already being tested in other countries with very promising results. We could not avoid trying to develop this type of therapy in Portugal ”, justified the general director of Crioestaminal, André Gomes.
This experimental drug consists of doses of 100 million mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in the umbilical cord tissue, the first doses having been subjected to quality controls that allowed the validation of the entire process and its qualification. as experimental therapy.
According to André Gomes, “this experimental drug was developed, in record time, in the new cell therapy drug production unit of Crioestaminal” and was the result of the efforts of the company’s team of technicians and researchers in recent months.
“We are, at this moment, in a position to produce about two dozen doses a week, with the possibility of expanding production, if necessary,” he guaranteed.
The company explains, in a statement, that “the use of this type of cells to treat patients with severe pneumonia associated with covid-19 has been tested in China, the USA and some European countries, with more than 20 clinical trials in course to study the safety and efficacy of this therapy “.
“Results from recent clinical studies have revealed a remarkable reversal of symptoms, with a significant improvement in lung function and other symptoms for patients in a more serious condition, with a reduced length of stay in intensive care,” he adds.
In his opinion, “although these studies have been carried out in a still limited number of patients, the favorable results obtained suggest that MSCs of umbilical cord tissue may constitute a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of this disease”.
The drug “has other applications in the area of immune system regulation, specifically in the treatment of bone marrow transplant patients who develop a severe form of graft-versus-host disease,” he adds.
In this context, the use of SLCTmsc02 has already been authorized by Infarmed for its clinical application at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Lisbon.
According to Crioestaminal, the inauguration of its new production unit, this year, in the Biocant Park, “allowed not only the production of this experimental drug, but others for clinical trials and experimental therapies in various areas of medicine, with the possibility of integration of international consortiums in the field of cell therapies “.
“The project, which represents an investment of one million euros and aims to be a benchmark in Europe, aims to produce this type of medicine and explore the therapeutic potential of stem cells, whether from mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord tissue , in autoimmune diseases, either in the cells of the umbilical cord blood in the area of developmental pediatrics ”, he adds.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,285,160 deaths in more than 52.1 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 3,181 people died from 198,011 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
