A treatment for the deadly Covid-19 infection using immune cells from young and healthy volunteers could be available to the NHS within weeks, it is reported.
The scientists responsible for cloning Dolly the Sheep in 1996 are understood to be in talks with the Government with a view to using the new therapy.
It has already used the immunity-building cell transfusions to successfully treat cancer. Now the scientists believe it will also work against the coronavirus.
"One of the key challenges of fighting viral infection is to develop something that is going to attack the infected cells and not the normal cells," Dr Brian Kelly, senior strategic medical adviser in the study, told The Telegraph.
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"So the solution that we came up with was to look at the body's natural defences to viral infection.
"In patients who have successfully fought a viral infection, they have expanded their own immune system and that persists after that to stop them becoming infected again."
Dr Kelly is leading a group of researchers at TC BioPharm, a cell therapy firm near Glasgow. It was founded by Angela Scott, who was part of the team who cloned Dolly the Sheep in Edinburgh in 1996.
But Dr Kelly said the latest treatment sees donor T-cells differ from normal immune cells as they do not identify invaders in the body based on alien protrusions on the surface of cells, but by detecting the unusual metabolism of viruses.
When the donor cells do detect a virus, they begin to destroy while also signalling it to the rest of the immune system as an alien intrusion requiring eradication.
Dr Kelly said with this approach, even if the virus mutated and returned to a body, the infusion exercise could be repeated and would still work.
