Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel today directed the prescription of Biomodulin T in primary health care during a meeting with scientists and experts, given the successful results of several clinical trials with this drug.

After learning of the drug’s effectiveness in the most recent studies, the president said he would take advantage of its confirmed preventive effect on acute respiratory infections (ARI) and the productive capacities installed, in addition to extending the use of Biomodulin T to Cuban communities.

Díaz-Canel commented that this is another Cuban medicine of excellence, which resolves health situations in two very important population groups due to the country’s demographic characteristics: the elderly and children, which is why he also suggested working with agility in its clinical development due to its broad potential for export.

Biomodulin T is an injectable product based on bovine thymus extract, generated by the National Biopreparations Centre (BioCen) for immune dysfunction and the treatment of recurrent infections in the elderly.

It also has anti-inflammatory effects and is recognised for its value in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis B. At the meeting, BioCen’s director of research and development, Alexis Labrada, explained that after a clinical trial on almost nine thousand patients in nursing homes, it was found that the incidence of acute respiratory infections was reduced by 70 percent, and therefore the risk of death from this cause in the elderly was halved.

Biomodulin T has also been studied with very good results in oncology, from combined treatment with cancer chemotherapy and immunotherapy. It rejuvenates the immune system of patients, who are then better able to fight the disease, Labrada said.

From another successful trial, it was reported that out of a total of 60 children with thymic hypoplasia included in the research, 83 percent normalised thymus size and 71 percent achieved clinical improvement, which translates into a direct therapeutic capacity on this gland of the immune system, making the Cuban drug the only one of its kind in the world.

At the meeting it emerged that, although Biomodulin T is backed by excellent efficacy and safety results from clinical trials, publications and more than 20 years of use in clinical practice by immunologists, it was during the Covid-19 pandemic that it achieved great notoriety by significantly reducing morbidity and mortality in older adults.

Registered in Cuba since 1994, the drug won two Academy of Sciences awards in 2022 for its results as part of the treatment of lung cancer patients and its immunomodulatory effects in elderly people living in nursing homes.