Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic underlined that by investing in both basic and clinical life science research and if there are enough volunteers, it is feasible to have -validated by Phase III clinical trials- vaccines in less than a year. Regarding the treatment options for the people who were infected by COVID-19, we know that it was the large clinical trials - like SOLIDARITY (WHO) and RECOVERY (UK)- that gave the most valid results, and that although hundreds of drugs were repurposed, sadly, most proved to be unsuccessful. Repurposing drugs and compassionate use, were the only options for the first half of 2020. The same applied to the convalescent plasma (CP) approach; however, apart from CP, other cell derived therapeutics were deployed, such as synthetic monoclonal antibodies, which were also tested and given provisional licences by health authorities. Unfortunately, synthetic antibody production comes with problems related to low and slow yield that were not overcome, while SARS-CoV-2 viral mutations may possibly render them less effective. One approach that works and is currently assessed in several clinical trials, is mesenchymal stromal cell (MSCs) and extracellular vesicle (EV) administration for therapy. Interdisciplinarity may prove key here. Easy to produce nanomaterials and biomaterials should be further investigated to increase bioproduction of MSCs, both at the level of therapeutics, as the base substrate for EV production and to upscale synthetic antibody production for therapy.
Highlights
The global urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic coupled with the funding and the contribution of volunteers has advanced vaccine research and clinical trials with unprecedented speed
extracellular vesicle (EV) and shedding vesicles originate as bulges on the surface of the cells. Increasing their turnover and how their formation can be stimulated depending on cell type, is under investigation. It is a matter of scientific breakthrough and of utmost clinical importance to understand the mechanism that EVs are secreted from the cells, and more importantly the mesenchymal stromal cell (MSCs) and stem cells that are used in clinical trials
Our results confirm that graphene oxide nanoflakes should be further investigated as a coating biomaterial for hESC cultures, aiming to identify whether Graphene oxide (GO) enhances the secretion of EVs
Summary
The global urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic coupled with the funding and the contribution of volunteers has advanced vaccine research and clinical trials with unprecedented speed. Magnanimous efforts were put into repurposing drugs to fight the coronavirus infection, the side of pharmaceutical interventions failed to catch up with the speed of the prophylactic interventions, i.e., the vaccine R&D. These novel vaccine platforms, some of which had never been marketed before the pandemic, gained conditional authorization for use in humans (such as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines), are essentially nanocarrier based delivery systems. Irrespective of the advantages weighing on their side, the formulation or the adjuvants of the nanoparticle delivery platforms may induce immunogenic reactions and may not be consistent amongst different people Keeping these limitations under consideration, other types of carriers have been designed and even deployed for COVID-19 treatment. At the forefront of these mainly MSC derived (Li et al, 2020) cell-based therapeutics are extracellular vesicles (EVs) (Börger et al, 2020; O’Driscoll, 2020; Pocsfalvi et al, 2020; Machhi et al, 2021)
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