Small state agencies like CIRM don’t normally get to partner with a behemoth like the Department of Defense (DOD), but these are not normal times. Far from it. That’s why we are both joining forces with the National Institutes of Health to fund a clinical trial that hopes to help patients on a ventilator battling a sometime fatal condition that attacks their lungs.

The study is being run by Dr. Michael Matthay from U.C. San Francisco. CIRM awarded Dr. Matthay $750,000 to help expand an existing trial and to partner with U.C. Davis to bring in more patients, particularly from underserved communities.

This approach uses mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) taken from bone marrow to help patients with a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This occurs when the virus attacks the lungs.

In an article in UCSF News, Dr. Matthay says the impact can be devastating.

“Tiny air spaces in the lungs fill up with fluid and prevent normal oxygen uptake in the lungs. That’s why the patient has respiratory failure. Usually these patients have to be intubated and treated with a mechanical ventilator.”

Many patients don’t survive. Dr. Matthay estimates that as many as 60 percent of COVID-19 patients who get ARDS die.

This is a Phase 2 double blind clinical trial which means that half the 120 patients who are enrolled will get MSCs (which come from young, health donors) and the other half will get a placebo. Neither the patients getting treated nor the doctors and nurses treating them will know who gets what.

Interestingly this trial did not get started as a response to COVID-19. In fact, it’s the result of years of work by Dr. Matthay and his team hoping to see if MSC’s could help people who have ARDs as a result of trauma, bacterial or other infection. They first started treating patients earlier this year when most people still considered the coronavirus a distant threat.

“We started the study in January 2020, and then COVID-19 hit, so we have been enrolling patients over the last eight months. Most of the patients we’ve enrolled in the trial have ended up having severe viral pneumonia from COVID.”

So far CIRM has funded 17 different projects targeting COVID-19. You can read about those in our Press Release section.