A surprising and positive development took place in Israel on Friday with the announcement of two hospitals that say they have developed a drug that would allow patients with COVID-19 to leave the hospital after just a few days.
At Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, 30 COVID-19 patients whose condition was moderate or poor received the in-house developed drug EXO-CD24 and all 30 recovered, 29 of them even within three to five days while one patient recovery took a few days longer, newspapers in Israel report.
The drug developed by Professor Nadir Arber fights the cytokine storm, a potentially deadly overreaction of the immune system to the coronavirus infection that is believed to be responsible for much of the deaths associated with the disease.
Professor Arber has spent decades researching exosomes, tiny ‘transporters’ that move materials between cells, to deliver a protein called CD24 to the lungs.
“The protein helps calm the immune system and quell the storm,” co-researcher Shiran Shapira told news site Ynet, “it resides on the surface of cells and plays a known and important role in regulating the immune system.”
Professor Arber said that “the preparation is inhaled once a day for a few minutes for five days. The preparation is delivered directly to the lungs, the center of the storm, and unlike other formulas that selectively contain a particular cytokine, or act extensively but cause many serious side effects, EXO-CD24 is administered topically, it has a broad effect and without side effects. ”
The drug will now enter further phases of testing, but hospital officials have already called it a potential game-changer in the fight against the severe COVID-19 disease.
At the same time, the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem also reported a possible cure for COVID-19 using the drug Allocetra developed by Professor Dror Mevorach, director of the Research Center for Rheumatology and Internal Medicine, who initially developed it for the treatment of overactive immune systems. which cause the secretion of cytokines.
The hospital gave this drug to 21 critically ill patients who also suffered from underlying conditions. According to the doctors, 19 patients recovered within six days and were discharged from the hospital after eight days on average.
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