Another Israeli drug for seriously ill coronavirus patients, further along in clinical trials than the recently publicized EXO-CD24, has successfuly completed Phase 2 trials, Channel 13 News reported on Tuesday evening.

Ninety percent of twenty seriously ill coronavirus patients treated with the drug Allocetra recovered, the report said.

Channel 13 interviewed Yair Tayeb, a 49-year-old Israeli who was hospitalized in serious condition with breathing difficulties caused by the coronavirus. Within two hours of receiving the drug, Tayeb began feeling better and three days later, he was released from the hospital.

“I was in very serious condition,” Tayeb said. “I couldn’t breathe, I could barely speak.”

“They gave me the medication and suddenly, after two hours, I stopped coughing,  I started being able to breathe. Now I’m going home – two days ago I couldn’t even stand up.”

Like the drug EXO-CD24, Allocetra fights the cytokine storm – a life-threatening immune response during which the body starts to attack its own cells – which scientists believe is fueling many coronavirus deaths. Cytokines are part of the body’s normal immune response to infection but their sudden release in large quantities can cause multisystem organ failure and death.

“Allocetra can prevent the need to ventilate seriously and critically ill virus patients. That’s the main objective because once a patient is ventilated, everything changes – complications rise and treatment becomes more difficult,” said Dr. Dror Mevorah, chief medical officer at Enlivex Therapeutics, the Israeli drug company that developed Allocetra, and head of a coronavirus ward at Hadassah Ein Kerem.

Allocetra is now entering Phase 3 trials.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)