As the world awaits a universally available, safe, and effective vaccine for COVID-19, scientists are becoming more and more creative in their quest for other ways to shield people from the virus.
Now, a clinical test has started in Australia to find out if nasal drops containing chicken antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 can provide provisional protection.
The research team from Stanford University that's sponsoring the uncommon phase 1 research is hoping that the antibodies can protect people from greater risk of contagion for several hours.
Reports on this new finding specify that if it is effective, people could simply "sniff the nasal drops before they get on a plane, working in a crowded area, entering a college dormitory," or be in a family gathering. Commenting on the idea, Stanford protein chemist Daria Mochly-Rosen said, "There is a huge opportunity."
Unusually 'Low-Tech' Approach
Currently, other protective nasal sprays are reportedly being developed. However, this Stanford approach is said to be "unusually low-tech," depending on antibodies collected from egg yolks of chickens injected with spike, "the surface protein of SARS-CoV-2."
The test will examine the safety of such antibodies provided "intranasally." Also, for assessment is the duration of the persistence of these antibodies in the nose will also be assessed.
Furthermore, the study investigators are also planning to test if the antibody-laden nasal drops shield hamsters purposely exposed to the virus.
According to an infectious disease clinician at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Michael Diamond, in principle, "the concept sort of makes sense."
Diamond, who is currently devising a nasal-administered COVID-19 vaccine, added, "There are a couple of issues to think about." One of them is how long it will take for the chicken antibodies to last before they damage.
The other issue to think about, he continued, is whether humans are likely to develop an immune response against them.
48 People Being Tested
Mochly-Rosen is confident the antibodies will pass the said tests. However, it said, the placebo-controlled safety trial is now occurring in 48 individuals in Australia.
A part of nonprofit SPARK, a project Mochly-Rosen launched in 2006, helped researchers conduct proof-of-concept studies that could have biomedical research ideas translated into medicines.
Typically, lab-made antibodies for human drugs are costly to develop and eventually manufacture, depending on a big number of cells grown in bioreactors.
Contradicting this usual lab practice, to make the chicken antibodies, scientists inject the spike protein in chickens' chest.
As a result, the birds mount a dynamic immune response to the injected spike, including laying eggs that have antibodies against the coronavirus protein.
To come up with such results, scientists harvest the antibodies, a unique chicken variety, also known as immunoglobulin Y or IgY, from the yolks "and formulate the nasal drops." Relatively the research team thinks "a dose of the egg-deprived product could cost just a dollar."
The IgY Solutions
This idea came from the University of Technology Sydney's Michael Wallach, a Spark director in Australia, who has developed vaccines to shield chickens from disease and has tried chicken antibodies in a mouse influenza model.
The instances reported include: clinical trials are testing if gargling the IgY solutions can shield patients with cystic fibrosis patients from a respiratory tract infection using Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Others, on the other hand, test an IgY mouthwash for the prevention of dental plaque resulting from Streptococcus mutans, as well as a food supplement for Helicobacter pylori treatment.
Mochly-Rosen opposes that the antibody's natural degradation, the so-called half-life, in the nose, is not what will restrict the limit of duration it could shield a person.
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