Image Credit: University of Minnesota
While doctors are still trying to better understand how to treat some of the most severe cases of COVID-19, researchers are looking at their current scientific “toolkit” to see if any potential therapies for other diseases could also help treat patients with COVID-19. One example of this is a treatment developed by Fate Therapeutics called FT516, which received support in its early stages from a Late Stage Preclinical grant awarded by CIRM.
FT516 uses induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are a kind of stem cell made from reprogrammed skin or blood cells. These newly made stem cells have the potential to become any kind of cell in the body. For FT516, iPSCs are transformed into natural killer (NK) cells, which are a type of white blood cell that are a vital part of the immune system and play a role in fighting off viral infections.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, FT516 was used in a clinical trial to treat patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and B-cell lymphoma, which are two different kinds of blood cancer.
Due to the natural ability of NK cells to fight off viruses, it is believed that FT516 may also help play a role in diminishing viral replication of the novel coronavirus in COVID-19 patients. In fact, Fate Therapeutics, in partnership with the University of Minnesota, has treated their first COVID-19 patient with FT516 in a new clinical trial.
In a news release, Dr. Joshua Rhein, Physician at the University of Minnesota running the trial site, elaborates on how FT516 could help COVID-19 patients.
“The medical research community has been mobilized to meet the unique challenges that COVID-19 presents. There are limited treatment options for COVID-19, and we have been inundated daily with reports of varying quality describing the potential of numerous therapies. We know that NK cells play an important role in responding to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, and that these cells often become depleted in infected patients. Our intent is to replenish NK cells in order to restore a functional immune system and directly target the virus.”
In its own response to the coronavirus pandemic, CIRM has funded three clinical trials as part of $5 million in emergency funding for COVID-19 related projects. They include the following: a convalescent plasma study conducted by Dr. John Zaia at City of Hope, a treatment for acute respiratory distress syndrome (a serious and lethal consequence of COVID-19) conducted by Dr. Michael Matthay at UCSF, and a study that also uses NK cells to treat COVID-19 patients conducted by Dr. Xiaokui Zhang at Celularity Inc. Visit our dashboard page to learn more about these clinical projects.
The Stem Cellar 
NK cell is a component of immune cells which are strong and potent to inhibit virus infection. However, many viruses have evolve mechanisms to thwart NK cells activities. At an early stage of virus infection, NK cells respond to inflammatory signals, resulting in proliferation, cytokines production and cytolytic activity that can reduce virus loads. The antiviral response of NK cells play role by mediating with inflammatory milieu to guide other innate immune cells such as T cells, dendretic cells, B cells and other cell types for adoptive immune response during viral infection. Clinical investigation revealed that majority of patients infected with Covid-19 showed the suppression of immunity of CD-8 T cells, CD-4 T cells and NK cells. Recently, the outbreak of Covid-19 in Europe and USA have been found to be related to mutated strain of G618D, which has much high infection rate than usual. Patients with high viral loads confronted with body immune response tend to easily induce cytokines storm which is harmful to functioning organs. To date, it is highly recommended to initiate with drugs treatment to drastically kill and weaken the potential of viral infection before introducing F516-NK cell therapy to completely eradicate the viral loads in the body. .