A new coronavirus treatment being developed at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center has successfully completed phase 1 trials and appears to have helped numerous moderate-to-serious cases of COVID-19 quickly recover from the disease, the hospital said Friday.

Hailing a “huge breakthrough,” the hospital said Prof. Nadir Arber’s EXO-CD24 substance had been administered to 30 patients whose conditions were moderate or worse, and all 30 recovered — 29 of them within three to five days.

The medicine fights the cytokine storm — a potentially lethal immune overreaction to the coronavirus infection that is believed to be responsible for much of the deaths associated with the disease.

It uses exosomes — tiny carrier sacs that shuttle materials between cells — to deliver a protein called CD24 to the lungs, which Arber has spent decades researching.

“This protein is located on the surface of cells and has a well known and important role in regulating the immune system,” said researcher Shiran Shapira of Arber’s lab.

The protein helps calm down the immune system and curb the storm.

“The preparation is inhaled once a day for a few minutes, for five days,” Arber said. “The preparation is directed straight to the heart of the storm — the lungs — so unlike other formulas… which selectively restrain a certain cytokine, or operate widely but cause many serious side effects, EXO-CD24 is administered locally, works broadly and without side effects.”

The medicine will now move on to further trial phases, but hospital officials were already hailing it as a possible game-changer in fighting serious COVID-19 illness.

Ichilov director Roni Gamzu, the former coronavirus czar, said the research “is advanced and sophisticated and may save coronavirus patients. The results of the phase 1 trial are excellent and give us all confidence in the method [Arber] has been researching in his lab for many years.”

He added: “I am proud that at Ichilov we are… possibly bringing a blue and white remedy to a terrible global pandemic.”

Very encouraging. Even more so if it has any effect on other diseases.

Far too many assumptions being made on this. Best to await what is said and then to read the expert peer reviews of the findings before coming to any conclusions.

I cannot myself see why the Chinese would deliberately release something like this. Forget the morality involved and look only at the economics. What is the benefit of throwing your markets into turmoil and recession?

A consequence of poor food hygiene or cultural behaviour, perhaps. An experiment that went wrong, again possible.

Our objectives ought though to be to try to help them avoid such things happening again by co-operative working and not by taking the moral high ground and shaming them. Asian people react very badly to being shamed and can take great offensive which then results in retaliation far beyond anything we think might be reasonable. I have known people get murdered simply because they slighted someone. It matters to them and we need to tread carefully.

Amen! But it is so nice

45% of the world’s population don’t drink alcohol

A frightening number.

Of course true but that's not the point I am trying to make. If we need China to change then we need them to co-operate and want to change. Understanding how they think and knowing how best to handle them, and how not to handle them, is my point.

It's no different to any other situation where negotiation and compromise are needed to get the desired result. If force is out of the question, and it certainly appears to be, then negotiation and diplomacy are our only weapons. Trade wars won't work in these circumstances. Only reasoning with mutual self-interest as the key element would seem to have a chance of success. Therefore reigning in the rhetoric is in our own ultimate interests.