After confirming more than 1,156 Covid-19 cases and 1 death on USS Theodore Roosevelt, the US Department of Defense came to see the disease differently from the major stream. Covid-19 is commonly known as a respiratory disease that may cause other symptom complexes. However the US Department of Defense seems to think it’s all about blood.
According to a California-based think tank Milken Institute, the US Department of Defense is currently funding 6 treatments for Covid-19 except vaccines, and all of those 6 treatments are about one thing of our body, blood. They also awarded a $4.4 million contract for a technology which is not directly used for Covid-19 between Covid-19 related fundings, however this is also about blood and the contractor provides blood purification filters for Covid-19.
ExThera Medical had its multi center trial funded by the US Department of Defense for the new blood purification system. Their Seraph100 is designed to directly remove SARS-CoV-2 virus/RNA from bloodstream. On August 11, 2020, the company announced the Seraph100 was used by the US Department of Defense to treat Covid-19. The patients were admitted into the ICU at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Spring 2020. These patients were the first in the U.S. to be treated with Seraph100 filters for Covid-19. During and after the treatments, the patients reportedly experienced clinical and quantitative improvement with no adverse effects. Based on their preliminary data, survival rate of critically ill Covid-19 patients in the EU was approximately 75% with the treatment of Seraph100. The filter is said to be capable of removing a broad range of viruses, toxins, cytokines and bacteria from the bloodstream.
I introduced the alternative treatment for Covid-19 in my previous article of “Not a vaccine but not an antivirus, the alternative treatment for Covid-19 (not spiritual)”. One of the mentioned companies in that article CytoSorbents was awarded a $4.4 million contract by the US Department of Defense. The funded blood purification filter is designed to provide “universal plasma”, or plasma that can be admitted to anyone regardless of blood type. Only one week after CytoSorbents was awarded, Partner Therapeutics announced a $35 million contract with the US Department of Defense for the development and emergency use of their sargramostim named Leukine. It is a recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (rhuGM-CSF) which stimulates the differentiation, maturation and mobilization of cells involved in the immune response. GM-CSF has been shown to overcome the immunoparalysis observed in critically ill patients of Covid-19. Partner Therapeutics claims, therefore, GM-CSF treatment may exert a local effect on restoration of lung health and function and a systemic effect by resuming immune homeostasis.
The rest of treatments that the US Department of Defense is funding are all about convalescent plasma for Covid-19. A few days before the US Department of Defense awarded Partner Therapeutics, they also awarded Immunome to develop biosynthetic convalescent plasma for Covid-19. The $13.3 million funding was to develop biosynthetic convalescent plasma for Covid-19. They expect to accelerate the development and clinical trials of antibodies derived from B cell interrogation from patients who successfully recovered from the Covid-19 infection. The treatment to use convalescent plasma to newly infected patients was performed during 1918 flu pandemic and even MERS and SARS cases. The company claims their approach of reproducing the antibody response from Covid-19 survivors could be particularly effective in treating patients and also possibly as a preventive.
Among numbers of the potential treatments, the US Department of Defense is selectively funding only 3 types of treatments. One is to filter blood, another is to stimulate white blood cells, the other is to store plasma derived from the recovered patients. All of these are about processing blood. The US Department of Defense seems to consider blood is the key to fight against Covid-19.
