Plasma and placenta, alternatives to COVID-19 being studied in Israel
After the development of a series of antibodies in Israel that neutralise the coronavirus, the Ministry of Defence announced, companies in the country continue to investigate possible treatments for COVID-19, including one with plasma and a placenta-based cell therapy.
Although Israel is not one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, multiple initiatives have been underway for months in the search for solutions to stop the spread of the virus.
The many rumours that Israeli scientists had already succeeded in developing an effective vaccine were not true, but several Israeli companies, in collaboration with medical teams and specialists, had obtained encouraging results in tests and experiments on products intended not to immunise but to treat infected patients.
One such company is Pluristem, a regenerative medicine company that is in an advanced stage of testing a placenta-based cell therapy product that could "reduce the incidence and severity of COVID-19 pneumonia or pneumonitis," the company explains.
In a first stage of testing, Pluristem's product, created using a specific technology of its own, successfully treated seven high-risk patients in intensive care units in Israel with ventilators and severe respiratory failure.
In recent days, the company was authorised to begin its second phase of testing, in which it will treat 140 intubated and critically ill patients with injections of the cell product they developed.
Another company that has put its technology at the service of treating serious patients is Kamada, which describes its coronavirus product as a "passive vaccine" based on plasma extracted from patients who have recovered from the disease.
The plasma, a blood component obtained from patient donations, would contain antibodies generated during the disease which, after a purification process using the company's own technology, could be applied to the treatment of seriously ill patients.
"This concept has proven effective in the past in the treatment of serious infectious diseases," Kamada's CEO Amir London told Efe. He added that when the magnitude of the global crisis caused by the coronavirus was discovered, his company put its technology, which specialises in plasma-based products, at the service of the fight against the pandemic.
Neither of these two companies, however, has yet completed the necessary tests to market their products, which, although promising, do not yet offer definitive solutions.