Coronavirus: sea worm blood could be used to treat patients

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A solution from the blood of a sea worm with very high oxygenation powers could be administered to ten patients with Covid-19 as part of a clinical trial, we learned this Monday, March 30 from the Hemarina company behind the product.

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" We are waiting shortly for the decision of the Patient Protection Committee (CPP) knowing that the ANSM has already validated the trial, " said doctor of marine biology Franck Zal, head of the Breton company Hemarina. This Monday evening, the French drug agency was however not reachable to confirm this. The solution, intended for patients affected by Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), is produced from hemoglobin in the arena. Measuring between 10 and 15 cm, this worm is mainly known for the small twists visible on the beaches.

Its hemoglobin - a molecule present in red blood cells and which has the role of transporting oxygen in the body - is capable of delivering 40 times more oxygen than human hemoglobin. Unlike the latter, enclosed in red blood cells, that of the arenicola is extracellular. " The goal is to use this molecule as a kind of molecular respirator before patients go into a heavy resuscitation process ," argued Franck Zal, recalling the current lack of artificial respirators.

Originally tested for organ transplant

Initially, this hemoglobin was tested for organ transplant. When added to organ preservation solutions for grafting, it makes it possible to extend their conservation period from a few hours to several days, and to speed up the recovery of organ function after the transplant.

Faced with Covid-19 against which no treatment has yet really proven its effectiveness, the only option available to caregivers is to re-oxygenate patients with the most severe forms of the disease. If the solution proposed by Hemarina works, it could allow patients to be better oxygenated and prevent respiratory distress from worsening.

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Professor Lantieri notably used this process during the first total face transplant in 2018 to allow better oxygenation of the graft. A fervent defender of this new biotechnology, the Nobel Prize in Medicine had urged the Ministry of Health to test this solution from sea worm blood on patients with Covid-19. " The oxygen transporter invented by Franck Zal could avoid intubating hospital patients ," said the head of the reconstructive surgery department at Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris.

The development of a treatment protocol

The company's product, called HEMO2life, has already been tested in the United States on people with cerebral hypoxia. " The principle remains the same, " assured Franck Zal. The biotechnology laboratory is currently awaiting authorization to market its product. “ We are in the process of refining the protocol with resuscitators and pharmacologists. I am in contact with them several times a day, sometimes until two in the morning, to answer their questions. It is necessary to determine the right dose to administer and to which type of patient will be addressed the treatment ”specified Franck Zal a few days ago to our colleagues from France 3 Brittany.

Based in Morlaix, he is preparing to send one hundred doses of his injectable product to the Parisian hospitals Georges Pompidou and de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, where the test is to take place. The company, which has its own sea worm farm in Vendée, has 5,000 doses immediately available and could produce 15,000 others " fairly quickly ".

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(With AFP)

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