January 28, 2023,The team of Professor Cai Cheguo and Dr. Liao Yan from the R&D Center of Shenzhen Beike Biotechnology Co., Ltd. published an article in the internationally authoritative academic journal “Cell Death & Disease” (impact factor = 9.68, District 1, Chinese Academy of Sciences) published online research results on the effectiveness of inflammatory factor IL-18-empowered umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells in enhancing the therapeutic effect of lung injury caused by severe viral pneumonia. The title of the paper is: “Interleukin-18-primed human umbilical cord-mesenchymal stem cells achieve superior therapeutic efficacy for severe viral pneumonia via enhancing T-cell immunosuppression.” in recent years. The transformation of Beike Bio’s scientific research achievements has steadily improved, which is not only reflected in “quantitative growth” but also in “qualitative leap”. Beike Biotech’s continuous breakthroughs in publishing high-level papers, especially academic papers in authoritative international journals, are a reflection of its scientific research strength and technological innovation.
(Paper link:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-023-05597-3,Please click “Read the original text” at the end of the article to view).
The new coronavirus that broke out at the end of 2019 is a type of virus that the population is generally susceptible to. It mainly causes lung lesions. The infection is characterized by fever, dry cough, shortness of breath, and inflammatory changes in the lungs. Due to the lack of effective treatments for COVID-19 infection, clinical practice mainly relies on symptomatic and supportive treatment. Some patients are prone to life-threatening acute respiratory distress syndrome after pneumonia enters the advanced stage. Because the autoimmune cells recognize and attack the virus, severe patients may induce a strong immune response. Multiple and large amounts of inflammatory cytokines appear in the lungs, disrupting the immune balance in the body, eventually leading to severe damage to the lungs and severe breathing disorders (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Immune regulatory mechanism after new coronavirus infection
At present, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), as a type of adult stem cells with good clinical application value, are widely used in the research of many different types of clinical diseases. They especially perform well in clinical research related to immunomodulatory functions. They can effectively regulate the immune environment in patients, control the level of inflammation, and thereby reduce the damage to the body caused by excessive inflammation. Although different research results show that MSCs have shown excellent therapeutic effects in clinical studies, there are still actual differences in therapeutic effects among different groups of people. This may be due to the heterogeneity of MSCs on the one hand. MSCs produced from different human sources or produced by different preparation methods all show cell heterogeneity, which can lead to slight differences in stem cell functions and therapeutic effects. Therefore, scientists are trying to find specific functional subpopulations of MSCs or study available technical means to optimize the biological functions in MSCs from different sources to make them more uniform, younger and have specific functions, which will ultimately improve the efficacy of specific diseases and improve the clinical remission rate of diseases.
In this study,Researchers found that by using the inflammatory factor IL-18 to “empower” umbilical cord MSCs in the in vitro culture stage, it can effectively enhance the immune regulatory effect on T cells in in vitro experiments; it can alleviate severe lung inflammation caused by the virus in in vivo experiments, thereby reducing lung damage, improving the survival rate of viral pneumonia model mice, and improving various clinical manifestations (Figure 2).
Figure 2 IL-18 empowered MSCs significantly improves the therapeutic effect of viral pneumonia in mice
This study obtainedThe financial support from Guangdong Province’s “Science and Technology Assists the Economy 2020” key project and the Guangdong Province Basic and Applied Basic Research Fund General Project (2021A1515011108) is of great significance in promoting the application of umbilical cord MSCs in the clinical treatment of patients with viral pneumonia, especially in the clinical treatment of severe and critical patients; at the same time, the new technology for empowering MSCs preparation developed by this research result is It has raised the technical barriers in the stem cell industry and enhanced the market competitiveness of enterprises. Moreover, Beike Biotech has complete intellectual property protection. It is a new product pipeline that Beike Biotech will lay out in the field of precision therapy in the future.