Stem Cell Therapy Potency in Personalizing Severe COVID-19 Treatment

Abstract

Currently, there are no specific and efficient vaccines or drugs for COVID-19, particularly in severe cases. A wide range of variations in the clinical symptoms of different patients attributed to genomic differences. Therefore, personalized treatments seem to play a critical role in improving these symptoms and even similar conditions. Prompted by the uncertainties in the area of COVID-19 therapies, we reviewed the published papers and concepts to gather and provide useful information to clinicians and researchers interested in personalized medicine and cell-based therapy. One novel aspect of this study focuses on the potential application of personalized medicine in treating severe cases of COVID-19. However, it is theoretical, as any real-world examples of the use of genuinely personalized medicine have not existed yet. Nevertheless, we know that stem cells, especially MSCs, have immune-modulatory effects and can be stored for future personalized medicine applications. This theory has been conjugated with some evidence that we review in the present study. Besides, we discuss the importance of personalized medicine and its possible aspects in COVID-19 treatment, then review the cell-based therapy studies for COVID-19 with a particular focus on stem cell-based therapies as a primary personalized tool medicine. However, the idea of cell-based therapy has not been accepted by several scientific communities due to some concerns of lack of satisfactory clinical studies; still, the MSCs and their clinical outcomes have been revealed the safety and potency of this therapeutic approach in several diseases, especially in the immune-mediated inflammatory diseases and some incurable diseases. Promising outcomes have resulted in that clinical studies are going to continue.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cell-based therapy; Personalized medicine; Stem cell.

Fig. 1

The strategy of cell therapy and personalized medicine

Fig. 2

The multidisciplinary collaborations for personalized medicine of coronavirus infection

Fig. 3

The personalized cell-based therapy strategies in COVID-19 treatment; The figure is made with biorender (https://biorender.com/)

Fig. 4

First-generation stem cell types, including adult stem cells and fetal membrane-derived stem cells, demonstrated feasibility and safety; however, they were heterogeneous results and low efficiency in the clinical application. To resolve some limitations, second-generation stem cells suggest the advantage of pluripotent stem cells, including embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. Next-generation of stem cells for the enhancement of stem cell therapy is directed toward cell engineering

Fig. 5

Considered mechanisms of action of MSC function against respiratory inflammation caused by COVID-19. MSCs can be shown their positive effects on inhibiting the severe stage of COVID-19 by releasing cytokines and creating cell-cell interactions

Fig. 6

The strategy of MSCs in interaction with host immune cells; The figure is made with biorender (https://biorender.com/) [1]

Fig. 7

Graphs have been obtained from the content of https://clinicaltrials.gov/ and https://celltrials.org/; A: The histogram shows the total number of advanced cell therapy trials registered each year. B: Pie chart of the number of stem cell based-clinical trials for COVID-19 according to registered countries; the highest number of ongoing clinical trials respectively are in USA, China, United Kingdom; C: Bar chart represents all cell-based therapy clinical trials for COVID-19, binned by number per month, and color-coded by trial phase. The decline of new trial registrations recommends that companies that were ready and able to compete in cell-based therapy for COVID-19 have previously entered the market; D: Pie chart of different sources of MSCs used in COVID-19 clinical trials