Using a cutting-edge experimental therapy, doctors at a Bergen County hospital on Saturday injected cells from a placenta into a critically ill coronavirus patient, in the hope they will bolster his immune system and save his life.

It was believed to be the first time the procedure was performed in the United States to combat COVID-19, said Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck.

The cells, drawn from a human placenta, will hopefully aid the man’s immune response and could potentially also heal tissue damage to his lungs, said Drs. Ravit Barkama and Thomas Birch, who are clinical researchers at the hospital.

The otherwise relatively healthy 49-year-old man was hospitalized more than three weeks ago with shortness of breath and a fever, and has been on a ventilator in intensive care since March 20. His wife signed off on the emergency treatment, which was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration on Friday, the doctors said.

“We’re trying anything and everything that makes sense, that can be applied in a rational way,” Birch said.

Cell therapy is one of many potential treatments for the coronavirus that doctors are scrambling to test as the country faces its greatest public health crisis in at least a century. Bergen County has been at the center of New Jersey’s outbreak, which has claimed the lives of 2,183 people and sickened more than 58,000.

Holy Name’s procedure aims to counterattack a common complication seen in coronavirus cases known as the cytokine storm. Under it, the body’s immune system produces such a strong response to the illness that it begins to damage itself — picture an army bombing a village captured by the enemy, and the destruction left behind.

The placenta cells may potentially quiet down that response, bringing down dangerous inflammation, the doctors said. The mechanism is not completely understood, but the cells may work similarly to how they protect a pregnancy from the mother’s own immune system, the doctors said.

“Why doesn’t the mother reject a placenta? Why doesn’t her immune system reject it?” Birch asked.

The Pluristem clinical trial at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.Jeff Rhode

The procedure is championed by Pluristem Therapeutics, a Haifa, Israel, biotech company. On Tuesday, Pluristem announced that six critically ill COVID-19 patients in Israel had survived at least a week after receiving the cells, with four showing improved respiration.

Holy Name already has a relationship with Pluristem. The hospital is part of a clinical trial testing whether placenta cells are useful in treating chronic vascular problems that can lead to festering wounds and sometimes force amputations. The hospital has treated nine people in that trial — a “totally different” patient population that have wounds to the feet that will not heal, Barkama said.

The procedures for those patients and the man with COVID-19 were very similar, Barkama said. The placenta cells, which were taken following a live, healthy birth, were shipped Friday from Maryland frozen in liquid nitrogen. After being thawed, they were placed in 15 different syringes and injected into the muscles of the man’s body.

“The process itself is very simple,” Barkama said. “It’s the physiology around it that is very complicated.”

The Pluristem clinical trial at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, during the first weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Vincent Defedele from the pharmacy prepares the injections.Jeff Rhode

The doctors said they hope to see the man’s inflammation go down over the next week. From their experience with the vascular patients, the doctors said, the procedure appears to be safe and have few side effects, though the man is under constant monitoring given his condition.

With no known cure or vaccine for coronavirus, cell therapy is among many experimental treatments that doctors are trying in the crisis. Hospitals also are turning to unproven malaria medicines, antivirals and drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, hoping they’ll show results.

On April 2, a Somerset County biotech company announced it was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration to conduct a clinical study to test its own placenta therapy’s impact on the coronavirus. The company, Celularity of Warren, said it has approval for a study involving up to 86 patients with COVID-19.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the description of the cells injected into the patient. They were drawn from the placenta, but were not stem cells.

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