Sng22 Nov 2020 09:22
Holgate is one of the founders of Synairgen, a University of Southampton spin-off company that has been testing inhaled interferon-beta, an important innate defence that works by shutting down viral replication, as a treatment for Covid-19. A major international study backed by the World Health Organization, called Solidarity, showed that interferon-beta was not effective in treating hospitalised patients, but more recently Synairgen has published the results of a small pilot study suggesting that given in patients with milder disease β and inhaled rather than injected under the skin β it enhanced recovery.
βThe reason bats are able to harbour these viruses in such large numbers is that they have such a strong interferon response,β Holgate says. βThat is why they donβt develop disease.β Synairgen is now testing whether interferon-beta can prevent hospitalisation in patients who inhale it soon after testing positive, at home. If the approach works, he says, the advantage is that it will continue to do so even if the virus mutates, since interferonβs action does not depend on the structure of the virus