ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Currently, mortality due to COVID-19 is significantly reduced by vaccination, antiviral drugs, and some improved treatments. Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation—particularly umbilical cord-derived MSC (UC-MSC)—has been used as an adjuvant therapy for COVID-19 with some clinical evidence (reviewed in the publication). Moreover, a recent piece published in eBiomedicine (part of The Lancet, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2021.103789) in the previous month showed the long-term effects of UC-MSC transplantation in COVID-19 in a 1-year follow-up randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, demonstrating significantly recovered lung lesions and symptoms compared to the control group (i.e., without UC-MSC transplantation). In this commentary, we would like to discuss the value of UC-MSC transplantation for COVID-19 patients based on the results from this study and suggest applying this therapy for COVID-19 patients.
ABSTRACT
In 2020, we suggested that umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cell (UC-MSC) transplantation can significantly improve coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) symptoms based on evidential relations (10.4252/wjsc.v12.i8.721). One year later, this review aims to summarize and update the clinical evidence regarding UC-MSC usage in COVID-19 treatment. The publications on applications of UC-MSCs were searched in the PubMed, Web of Science, and Google scholar databases with the keywords ``umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells'' and ``COVID-19''. All publications about clinical studies, from case reports to randomized controlled trials (RCTs), were used as clinical evidence in this review. The results showed 16 publications (4 randomized clinical trials, 3 pilot studies/phase 1 clinical trials, 3 case series reports, and 6 case reports) with a total of 395 COVID-19 patients that were provided with UC-MSC transplantation. All publications demonstrated that UC-MSC transplantation is safe, well tolerated, improved COVID-19 symptoms, and significantly decreased mortality. These findings support our suggestion for the usage of off-the-shelf UC-MSCs for COVID-19 as an adjuvant therapy.