Therapeutics research

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 causes severe disease in certain patients, including cytokine storm syndrome and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), often leading to death. Although there are no current effective treatments for severe COVID-19 disease, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represent a promising new therapy due to their powerful immunomodulatory effects. These effects are thought to be mediated by their secretomes (including extracellular vesicles such as exosomes), which can reduce the occurrence of cytokine storm syndrome and ARDS. Moreover, MSCs can also reduce the level of pulmonary fibrosis and enhance tissue injury repair. Indeed, early-stage studies support the use of MSCs and their secretomes for the respiratory distress and lung issues related to severe COVID-19 (Leng et al. 2020; Sengupta et al. 2020).

We offer the following kits to support COVID-19 therapeutics researchers working with human MSCs and their secretomes:

Cellartis MSC Xeno-Free Culture Medium

• Maintenance of a stable MSC phenotype, including expression of CD markers and multilinear differentiation ability, offers an optimal model system
• Robust proliferative capacity yields enough cells for cell therapy research applications
• Maintenance of MSCs on regular tissue culture plates without coating reagents provides flexibility and ease of use

Capturem Extracellular Vesicle Isolation Kits

• Consistent, rapid isolation of highly pure, concentrated extracellular vesicles (EVs) from up to 850 µl (miniprep) or 24 ml (maxiprep) of biofluid, in <30 minutes
• Sufficient EV yield (10¹⁰ for miniprep or 10¹¹ for maxiprep) for downstream applications, with a faster, gentler workflow and higher EV purity than ultracentrifugation
• Purified EVs show expression of exosome protein markers and little to no contaminant proteins such as calnexin or albumin
• A single kit that works for many types of biofluids, such as plasma, serum, urine, milk, saliva, cell-conditioned media, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)

References

Leng, Z. et al. Transplantation of ACE2- Mesenchymal Stem Cells Improves the Outcome of Patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia. Aging and Disease 11, 216–228 (2020).

Senugupta, V. et al. Exosomes Derived from Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells as Treatment for Severe COVID-19. Stem Cells Dev. May 12, 2020. doi: 10.1089/scd.2020.0080. Online ahead of print.