01-10-2020

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to wreak havoc globally, scientists race to develop an effective medicine or vaccine to fight the infection. With more than 33.5 million people infected since the pandemic started in December 2019, finding a treatment for those infected is crucial to stemming its spread.

Now, a biotech company in Australia, Ena Respiratory said that a nasal spray it is developing might help boost the human immune system to fight flu and common colds, significantly reduced the growth of the coronavirus in a recent study in animals.The potential nasal spray may not only help treat COVID-19 but also prevent it.

The nasal spray
The novel product, called INNA-051, is being developed by Ena Respiratory, and laboratory experiments have shown that it reduced viral replication by as much as 96 percent in the animal study. Spearheaded by Public Health England�s (PHE) Deputy Director, Professor Miles Carroll, the new study described the potential treatment and has been published in the open-source preprint server bioRxiv*.

Used as a nasal spray, it aims to boost the natural immune system of the body to fight common colds and flu. It works by triggering the innate immune system, which is the body�s first line of defense against infection from a pathogen. When the drug has enhanced the immune system, it also prevented the infection and replication of SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory.

The SARS-CoV-2 infection is actively spreading worldwide, and it spreads quickly from one person to another through close contact and respiratory droplets. One of the biggest threats of the current pandemic is that several people infected with the virus are asymptomatic, which means that they do not know that they carry the virus. As a result, they are called silent spreaders.

The research team from the National Infection Service, Public Health England (PHE) wanted to develop the nasal spray to prevent the replication of the virus in the nasal area, the most common point of entry of the virus.

Further, the research team added that the prophylactic approach is important to people at a high risk of community transmission or development of the severe disease from COVID-19, such as older adults, people with comorbidities, and those who are immunocompromised.