Brazil to send entourage to Israel to see spray against COVID-19

President Jair Bolsonaro said he will send a Brazilian entourage to see the nasal spray EXO-CD24 against COVID-19, currently being developed by Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center, in Israel.

“We’re also making the arrangements to have an entourage go to Israel for the spray to cure COVID-19, EXO-CD24. Hopefully, it’s going to go well,” he said in a video recorded on São Francisco do Sul beach, on the coast of Santa Catarina state, on Tuesday (Feb. 16). The president and his family members spent the Carnival week at the Marechal Luz fort, a reserved military area.

“By all accounts, the treatment against COVID-19 with this spray in serious cases should in all likelihood prove successful,” the president added. Brazil, he went on, should participate in the next stage of tests on this product, currently in phase 2.

“We’ve talked to [Brazil’s national sanitary regulator] Anvisa. Once the protocol documentation comes in, I believe Anvisa has everything it needs to give its go-head so we can kick off testing also in Brazil.”

On Friday (12), Bolsonaro telephoned Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyaho on the matter.

INPI

On its website, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) shares information from multiple sources about studies conducted across the world on technology linked to COVID-19, including medication. According to INPI, in a publication dated February 8, the phase 1 tests with EXO-CD24 have been concluded.

“The hospital announced that the substance EXO-CD24 was administered on 30 patients whose conditions were moderate and worse, and all 30 recovered—29 of them in three to five days. The drug fights the storm of cytokines, believed to be responsible for many of the deaths associated with the disease. It uses exosomes—small bags carrying material between cells—to deliver a protein called CD24 to lungs, which the study group has studied for decades. This protein helps ease the immunological system and curb the storm,” the publication reads.

The text explains that the medication is inhaled once a day during a few minutes for five days, and heads directly to the lungs.

Thus far, INPI mentioned, there is no vaccine of pharmacological treatment approved for COVID-19. The vaccines being applied in several countries have been authorized for emergency use only and are still being studied.

Just as the vaccines, the studies on the medications are split into several stages, which need to be authorized by Anvisa in order to be conducted in Brazil. The EXO-CD24 spray is still not on the list of clinical trials authorized by the watchdog. In phase 3 of clinical trials, the medication is administered to a large number of people, usually thousands, so that its efficiency and safety can be demonstrated.