The UAE’s stem cell treatment for Covid-19 infections has been proven to be effective and safe as an add-on to standard care, the Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Centre (ADSCC) announced on Monday.
Initial results from the treatment – administered to 73 Covid-19 patients with moderate to severe symptoms – were promising, with all patients responding well, demonstrating that it was well tolerated. However, researchers stressed at the time that the results were preliminary and further analysis of the data was needed.
Now that the analysis has been done and positive results were confirmed, the experts studying the therapy have secured intellectual property rights protection, opening the way for the technology to be shared widely so more patients can benefit from it.
“The patients that received stem cell therapy improved faster than those who received the standard treatment only,” said Dr Fatema Alkaabi, co-principal investigator and specialist haematologist at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City.
“Patients who received the stem cell treatment demonstrated clinical improvement within the first four days, as evidenced by lower severity scores. The standard treatment group took eight days to show similar findings.”
In severe cases, the duration of hospitalisation for those who received the stem cell therapy was about six days at the median, while those who given the standard treatment spent about 22 days in the hospital, she added.
Further analyses revealed that patients treated with the stem cells were 3.1 times more likely to recover in less than seven days than those treated with standard therapy, and 67 per cent of the patients who received the stem cell treatment owe this recovery to the innovative cure.
How the process was analysed
Confirming the success of the treatment involved matching the data from the 73 patients in the trial to an equal number of historical controls, allowing researchers to compare the treatment outcomes.
The study measured the incidence of adverse effects, mortality rate within 28 days, and time to clinical improvement or discharge from hospital. Before treatment, a patient’s immune response profile, acute phase serum markers, and coagulation testing profile were evaluated.
Patients were excluded from the new treatment if they had haemoglobin levels below 10, any blood infections, a history of cancer, or if they received any treatment that was not part of the standard protocol, such as convalescent plasma therapy. Patients below 18 years old were also excluded.
The ADSCC said researchers are at various stages of investigation to establish its effectiveness (Phase 3 trial), optimal efficacy of dosage, and efficacy to treat other respiratory diseases such asthma, COPD, and cystic fibrosis.
Breakthrough cure now patented
The Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Centre’s (ADSCC) breakthrough Covid treatment is now patented. Researchers secured intellectual property rights protection, including copyright and knowhow, for the stem cell therapy.
This would pave the way for the centre to make the details of the treatment available for others to replicate via a licensing arrangement once it had formal UAE Government approval.
Three protection levels have been obtained: a patent on the method of harvesting (Granted by the International Centre for Patent Registration. UAE Ministry of Economy, April 30, 2020); copyrighted works of science on treatment procedure recommendations (Copyright Certificate No. EC-01-002809); characterisation of a method to harvest the stem cells (EC-01-002810); and a cell obtaining procedure (EC-01-002811), all IP-works were registered on May 26, 2020, in European organisation INTEROCO Copyright Office (Germany) with worldwide recognition in all countries – members of Berne Convention on copyright, and Know-How protection under trade secret corporate legal framework.
