Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service

COVID-19 is a community acquired pneumonia caused by infection with a novel coronavirus, SARS CoV2 and is a serious condition with high mortality in hospitalised patients, for which there is no currently approved treatment other than supportive care. Urgent investigation of potential treatments for this condition is required.
This protocol describes an overarching and adaptive trial designed to provide safety, pharmacokinetic (PK)/ pharmacodynamic (PD) information and exploratory biological surrogates of efficacy which may support further development and deployment of candidate therapies in larger scale trials of COVID-19 positive patients receiving normal standard of care.
Given the spectrum of clinical disease, community based infected patients or hospitalised patients can be included. Products requiring parenteral administration will only be investigated in hospitalised patients. Patients will be divided into cohorts, a) community b) hospitalised patients with new changes on a chest x-ray (CXR) or a computed tomography (CT) scan or requiring supplemental oxygen and c) hospitalised requiring assisted ventilation. Participants may be recruited from all three of these cohorts, depending on the experimental therapy, its route of administration and mechanism of action. The relevant cohort(s) for any given therapy will be detailed in the therapy-specific appendix.
Candidate therapies can be added to the protocol and previous candidates removed from further investigation as evidence emerges. The trial will be monitored by an independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) to ensure patient safety.
Each candidate cohort will include a small cohort of patients randomised to candidate therapy or existing standard of care management dependent on disease stage at entry. Cohort numbers will be defined in the protocol appendices.
This is a Phase IIa experimental medicine trial and as such formal sample size calculations are not appropriate.

The goal of this observational study is to analyse the cartilage and bone forming potential of cells isolated from the tissues of patients undergoing surgery for the treatment of polydactyly, hip dislocation and from other bio-banked cartilage tissues. The main question it aims to answer is:
Which of the following tissues from polydactyly digit, iliac apophysis or other bio-banked cartilage produce better cartilage in vitro and in vivo? Participants receiving digit amputation surgery for treatment of polydactyly will be asked to donate the associated waste tissue whilst participants receiving surgery to treat a dislocated hip will be asked to donate an extra small piece of cartilage tissue (approximately 1 gram) from the iliac apophysis. Other tissues for the study will be obtained from those donated to biobanks.