In this video, Georgina Ellison-Hughes Professor of Regenerative Muscle Physiology at King’s College London talks about a new technique to improve the outcome of patients with COVID-19 by transplanting ‘mesenchymal stem cells’.

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Transcript:
COVID-19 is a new illness that can affect your lungs and airways. In severe cases COVID-19 can cause something called a ‘cytokine storm’, which is an overreaction of the body’s immune system.
Think of cytokines like emergency response coordinators, telling ambulances where to go to deal with problems. However, sometimes the body’s response to infection can go into overdrive. That’s like lots of coordinators telling lots of ambulances to go to one emergency! This results in something called hyperinflammation, which in rare cases, can lead to death.

But what if there was a way to prevent or even attenuate the cytokine storm? This may be key for the treatment of COVID-19 infected patients. We spoke to Georgina Ellison-Hughes, Professor of Regenerative Muscle Physiology at King’s College London. She’s been working on a new technique to improve the outcome of patients with COVID-19 by transplanting ‘mesenchymal stem cells’.

Mesenchymal stem cells or MSCs are special cells found in our bone marrow. They’re special because they can transform into different types of cells such as cartilage, bone, tendons, muscle, and skin.
And they might be particularly useful for those suffering from COVID-19 because they can modify our body’s immune response, potentially preventing that dangerous cytokine storm.

So what happens if we inject these stem cells into patients with COVID-19?
Before the transplant, all patients had COVID-19 pneumonia, with symptoms of high fever, weakness, shortness of breath and low oxygen saturation. Results showed that all symptoms had disappeared by 2-4 days after the transplantation. This was not the case in the three placebo control patients. Among the MSC treated patients, one severe and two common patients were able to make a recovery and were able to be discharged 10 days after treatment.

Professor Ellison-Hughes and her colleagues are now part of a global study with clinical trials happening in London to see whether mesenchymal stem cells will help patients with severe COVID-19 infection.

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