Extinguish COVID-19 with hair loss stem cell nano exosomes!

The COVID-19 pandemic quackery reached its logical conclusion. And this hair loss stem cell nano exosome therapy has just been approved by FDA.

It had to come to this. Old men die the most from COVID-19, hair loss is associated with old age and being male, the obvious solution to the pandemic is to use hair restoration products to survive the coronavirus. Throw in some “stem cells” and nanotechnology-flavoured “exosomes”, add pressure on FDA from Republican politicians like we had with chloroquine and ivermectin, and you got yourself the insane amalgam of mainstream pandemic quackery in one single biomedical scam.

You will surely recall proxalutamide, the Chinese hair-loss drug which was repurposed as the magic COVID-19 cure by a team of Brazilian fraudsters and their US business partners. The team around Flavio Cadegiani and Ricardo Zimerman not only falsified trial data, they also mass-poisoned hundreds of COVID-19 patients in Brazilian hospitals with a toxic mixture of medicines described as “standard therapy” in order to achieve a huge mortality rate in their trial control arms, which then made proxalutamide look like a magic life-saver.

And of course we also had both stem cells and exosomes as the magic COVID-19 cure before. Both as it happens were pushed by Israeli scientists.

Professor Nadir Arber of Tel Aviv University was celebrated by the Israeli government as the Messiah who saved the world from COVID-19 using “exosomes” (actually just cell culture supernatant) from CD34-overexpressing HEK 293 cells. An amazing success rate was reported at his Ichilov hospital: COVID-19 patients who were as good as dead dead rose to complete health the matter in hours, thanks to Dr Arber’s “EXO-CD34” weapon dispelling the dangerous “cytokine storm”. Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not only met Arber, he even personally promoted his COVID-19 cure as Israel’s gift to the world.

Also the Greek government was so impressed that they let Arber run clinical trials in Greece, and of course also there miraculous success rates were reported. But soon after, all news about Arber’s magic exosome cure suddenly stopped. The media, once orgiastic and ecstatic, quietly moved onto other topics and another bullshit COVID-19 cures.

Meet the Israeli professor who may just have found a cure for COVID-19.

Watch 👇@tasmc1 pic.twitter.com/zRLMFadhM1

— Israel ישראל (@Israel) February 11, 2021

Naturally, stem cells were pushed for COVID-19 early on as well. Even earlier than exosomes! In fact, just when the pandemic started in USA and Europe, in March 2020, the Rutgers University professor Martin Grumet called to “save lives now” with the mesenchymal (bone marrow) stem cell product Remestemcel-L (or Ryoncil) by the Australian biotech Mesoblast. The company later partnered with Novartis and run promising clinical trials only to spectacularly fail in phase 3, as mentioned in this press release from September 2021:

“Mesoblast has been put on blast by the FDA yet again after the agency requested another trial for its failed, Novartis-backed COVID-19 respiratory treatment. The Australian cell therapy biotech will have to conduct another study of remestemcel-L to have a shot at an emergency use authorization from the FDA. […]

The treatment failed last December in a phase 3 study in 222 ventilator-dependent COVID-19 patients with moderate to severe ARDS and was halted early for showing no signs of reducing death in patients over the age of 65. Remestemcel-L showed a 48% reduction in death for patients under 65 years old after 90 days.”

Mesoblast: phase 3 trial of the MSC therapy for COVID-19 ARDS "was a bust" https://t.co/pc3QNf3R7i as well as it was in phase 3 of heart failure trial

— Alexey Bersenev (@cells_nnm) December 19, 2020

The pharma giant Novartis dropped Mesoblast like a hot potato right after, as a December 2021 press release reported, and the start-up’s once soaring stocks crumbled. And now, Mesoblast is being sued by its investors in USA and in Australia in a series of class action lawsuits:

“Mesoblast is already facing multiple class action lawsuits in the US after being accused overseas of making false or misleading statements to investors, as well as failing to disclose material adverse facts about Remestemcel-L.

Phi Finney McDonald said in documents sent to investors the claim will allege that Mesoblast misrepresented the efficacy and potential benefit of treating patients with Remestemcel-L; misrepresented the significance of trial results; did not disclose to the market material information, including the deficiencies in study design and statistics presented.”

Also early in the pandemic, the Israeli company Pluristem tried to pivot from peddling placenta-derived “stem” cells as a cure for acute radiation sickness (in case Iran attacks with nukes) to peddling these same placenta-derived “stem” cells for COVID-19.

In December 2021, Pluristem reported the results of its phase 2 clinical trial in USA, Germany, Israel and Bulgaria:

“Pluristem stated that the clinical trials did not meet the primary endpoint of significant improvement of VFD at 28 days.”

That was unfortunate, because prior to that Pluristem terminated its Phase 3 clinical trial for limb ischaemia, which used the same placenta cell product. Most recently, in July 2022, Pluristem reported that their Phase 3 clinical trial for muscle regeneration (again, same placenta product) also “did not meet the primary endpoint“. The company doesn’t give up though and decided to re-focus on lab-grown meat business, as apparently every Israeli “stem cell” and COVID-19 entrepreneur does these days.

This is the crux with phase 3 clinical trials. You can bullshit your way through phase 1 and 2 relatively easily, but phase 3 trials are very large, very expensive and thus independently overseen.

And now FDA green-lighted a phase 3 clinical trial for the US company Direct Biologics for their revolutionary regenerative medicine drug for COVID-19. Who can say no to “stem cells” AND “exosomes”? I daresay I know how all this will end.

A groundbreaking extracellular vesicle

A US company’s press release announced in April 2022:

“Direct Biologics, an innovative biotechnology company with a groundbreaking extracellular vesicle (EV) platform drug technology, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded their EV drug product ExoFlo with a Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation for the treatment of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) associated with COVID-19.”

PRESS RELEASE: FDA Approves Direct Biologics to Proceed with a Landmark Phase 3 Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) Trialhttps://t.co/1UVQzBUKdP#covidー19 #covid19news #covid #ards #extracellularvesicles pic.twitter.com/D01zIZp4wy

— Direct Biologics (@DirectBioAUS) April 22, 2022

The press release explains what the FDA-approved drug ExoFlo is:

“ExoFlo is an acellular human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) derived extracellular vesicle (EV) product. These nanosized EVs deliver thousands of signals in the form of regulatory proteins, microRNA, and messenger RNA to cells in the body, harnessing the anti-inflammatory and regenerative properties of bone marrow MSCs without the cost, complexity and limitations of scalability associated with MSC transplantation. ExoFlo is produced using a proprietary EV platform technology by Direct Biologics, LLC.”

What is this company, you might wonder, and how did they arrive to this amazing COVID-19 cure?

Well, the company offers this on its website:

“Direct Biologics offers a platform of regenerative products, including extracellular vesicles and placental-based allografts.”

The products, presumably including this amazing ExoFlo, are already available to paying customers via “compassionate use”. Not just for COVID-19! Actually, ExoFlo was designed as a therapy for hair loss! As one partner of Direct Biologics advertises:

“ExoFlo is a safe and natural preparation of exosome stem cells that contain growth signals to promote hair growth.

These exosomes signal dormant hair follicles to become reinvigorated in order to produce the growth of new hair cells.”

The price tag for ExoFlo therapy for hair loss ranges between $3,000 and $10,000. The product is injected into your scalp.

But for COVID-19, ExoFlo is injected intravenously. Presumably, it makes hair grow there as well?

I think I have a mechanistic explanation here, perfectly scientific. ExoFlo treatment for COVID-19 must work this way: the stem cell derived nano-exosomes cause hair growth inside your lung capillaries and alveolae. The virus gets trapped by this intra-pulmonal hair and is coughed out as a hairball.

Don’t laugh, I am sure my mechanistic model is much more sophisticated than anything the two “scientists” running Direct Biologics business as Chief Medical officer and Associate Chief Medical Officer, Vikram Sengupta and his wife Sascha Sengupta, can come up with. Together they own an infusion business, which qualifies them to know exactly how to inject cell supernatant into people’s veins.

And now they will be managing this phase 3 clinical trial, approved by FDA in April 2022:

“Receiving FDA approval for Phase 3 is a key milestone for Direct Biologics,” said Mark Adams, Co-Founder and CEO. “Coupled with the RMAT designation, we are now on an accelerated path towards commercialization with a potential life-saving drug—ExoFlo. This Phase 3 trial titled “Extinguish Covid-19” is an international, multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial. Our objective is to enroll patients with ARDS in hospital sites across US, Spain, India, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and South Africa, and to demonstrate a significant mortality reduction following treatment with ExoFlo compared to standard of care alone. As pioneers in the field of regenerative medical therapies, we at Direct Biologics are changing the future of medicine.”

“Extinguish COVID-19“, I like that trial title, so Fireman Sam-esque. Let’s see who is prepared to be duped into sponsoring it. Maybe Novartis again?

Prior to that, a phase 2 clinical trial was reported in an April 2022 press release as a resounding success:

“Overall, ExoFlo demonstrated a robust safety and efficacy profile that warrants further clinical investigation with a pivotal Phase III study. In addition to an unequaled reduction in 60-day mortality rate of 37.6% in comparison to placebo, no reportable adverse events were observed,” said Dr. Vikram Sengupta, Chief Medical Officer. “ExoFlo also substantially outperformed placebo with respect to time to discharge and ventilator free days. Additionally, subgroup analysis revealed a larger mortality benefit among patients who were severely hypoxic at randomization,” he said.”

This was the phase 2 trial NCT04493242 with 120 participants, the press release doesn’t say how many ended up analysed, and no results were posted and no research paper was published, because you just have to trust the press release. The phase 2 trial was approved based on this phase 1 clinical trial publication where the Senguptas and other authors insisted to have no conflicts of interests whatsoever:

Vikram Sengupta , Sascha Sengupta , Angel Lazo, Jr. , Peter Woods , Anna Nolan , Nicholas Bremer Exosomes Derived from Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells as Treatment for Severe COVID-19 Stem Cells and Development (2020) doi: 10.1089/scd.2020.0080 

This shameless contortion to deny obvious personal business interests passed peer review:

“This study was supported by Drs. Vikram and Sascha Sengupta in collaboration with Christ Hospital. None of the authors were compensated for this study. Thrivewell Infusion, LLC provided acquired, commercially available product from Direct Biologics, LLC, Austin, TX, storage, medical supplies, transportation, legal resources, as well as supportive administrative and clinical personnel.”

It was “a prospective nonblinded nonrandomized primary safety trial at a single hospital center” run in April 2020. The patients ranged from moderately sick with COVID-19 to mechanically ventilated and unable to give consent personally. This was the not-really-detailed description of the therapy they received:

“In total, 15 ml of ExoFlo was added to 100 mL of normal saline and administered intravenously for 60 min.”

All 27 COVID-19 patients were treated in parallel with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, and it appears they had to pay privately for the stem cell nano exosome nonsense. It is not discussed if they grew hair inside their blood vessels. In the end, the study declared ExoFlo to be able to “restore oxygenation, downregulate cytokine storm, and reconstitute immunity” compared to, well, there was no control arm, nothing to compare to, but this is exactly why it worked so great.

The Senguptas et al were asked by concerned scientists (Kim et al 2020) why they ran a trial seemingly without an ethics approval. To this, the COI-free Direct Biologics employees declared:

“The reported clinical trial was performed by the authors independently of corporate involvement under institutional review board (IRB) protocol review and approval.“

Which IRB approval? Issued by whom? None of your business. Kim et al also wanted to know what this ExoFlo exactly was, how it was supposed to work, and how safe it was. The Senguptas et al explained:

“The bone marrow (BM) cell source used in the manufacture of this ExoFlo lot is from the iliac crest aspiration of a single donor. […] Based upon the current BM MSC-derived EV literature, and internal characterization and potency studies, a primary mode of action for ExoFlo is to communicate changes in host immune response. […] Consistent with the years of mechanism of action studies performed to assess the MSCs themselves, the secreted biomolecule milieu is complex, and the primary mode of action is dependent on the environment into which it is introduced into the body.”

Basically, it’s bone marrow stem cell magic. You must believe in it or it won’t work. And in this response, suddenly Conflicts of Interest were declared. No, not for the Senguptas, they still have none. But we are told that the newly added co-authors Kevin C. Hicok and Timothy Moseley “serve as chief science officer and director of research and development, respectively, at Direct Biologics LLC, Austin, TX, from which they receive their paychecks and have a vested financial interest in the success of ExoFlo as a therapy.“

How do they know there are any bona fide “exosomes”, i.e. cell-secreted lipid vesicles and not just dead cell debris, in the cell culture supernatant? The Senguptas et al explain that they prove it “by traditional nanoparticle tracking analysis under both light scatter and fluorescence evaluation” and by “single particle interferometric reflectance imaging sensor technology to visualize and quantify fluorescent antibody-labeled particles“.

It sounds fancy, high-tech and very nanotechnological, but convincing it is not. But I am the last person to ridicule trash nanotechnology here, as you all well know.

You might wonder how that nonsense gained FDA approval, especially after the gigantic Mesoblast-Novartis cock-up. Simple answer: political meddling and institutional corruption. They are even proud of it, as a placed promo article celebrated already in October 2021:

“One of the treatment’s biggest supporters is Congressman Michael McCaul, representative for District 10. McCaul’s district covers the territory from Austin, where the drug was developed, through Katy and into parts of West Houston.

Direct Biologics appealed to McCaul for his support in helping the treatment gain FDA approval. When McCaul learned about the success of the drug, he championed for its approval.

“Navigating the FDA can seem onerous when first starting out,” McCaul said. “That is why when Direct Biologics approached me for assistance, I was passionate about helping them bring this life-saving treatment to Americans.”

McCaul is a Republican, here is his email from 2020 to FDA’s then-director Stephen Hahn:

Just as hydroxychloroquine got approved by FDA as a COVID-19 medicine under pressure from Trump and other Republicans, so was the quack hair-loss therapy ExoFlo green-lighted after a pushy Republican politician smelled money.

In case ExoFlo predictably fails in Phase 3 clinical trial, Direct Biologics is prepared to market it for other diseases, like “chronic non-healing wounds, soft tissue injuries and repetitive motion injuries“. And right now, phase 1 clinical trials for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease (NCT05176366 and NCT05176366, respectively) are starting, also there ExoFlo to be administered intravenously.

My only criticism is that Direct Biologics forgot to mention that ExoFlo not only cures COVID-19 while returning your long-lost hair, it is bound to rejuvenate you and extend your life. The Senguptas et al forgot the buzzwords “Anti-aging” and “Senolytics”. Because this is how the best COVID-19 therapies work:

Oh, and by the way, German expert Prof Dr Dr Dr Stehling recommends bone marrow or belly fat “stem cell exosome” therapy for erectile dysfunction. Watch out for the next therapeutic market for ExoFlo to penetrate!

I would like to thank Elizabeth Woeckner for finding the ExoFlo story and doing most of the research.

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