ITHACA, N.Y. – A team of researchers has developed a nasal formulation that blocks the spread of COVID-19 among ferrets – and are hopeful the formulation could have the same effect on humans, and potentially generate therapeutic treatments as well.
Ferrets are one of the best animal models for COVID-19, because they take the virus quite readily, and undergo both direct contact and airborne transmission. Ferrets, similar to humans, also generate antibodies against the virus, yet display limited clinical signs.
“This is a simple nasal formulation that we think can prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in humans,” said Chris Alabi, senior co-author on the paper and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Cornell University. “The beauty of the research is its simplicity. The ultimate goal is to create a nasal spray drug product that can be made widely available, one that can be kept readily in a purse or pocket. A key feature of this research is that it’s a plug-and-play platform technology that can be adapted and applied to other viruses or mutations.”
The project is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Porotto and Moscona labs at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Alabi lab at Cornell. The collaboration paired the Columbia group’s virology research with Alabi’s work in engineering multifunctional macromolecules, with the initial goal of targeting the flu virus.
Researchers at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands tested the formulation on ferrets, which turns out to be an ideal model for replicating the way SARS-CoV-2 spreads among, and proliferates inside, humans.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” Alabi said. “They mimic the disease indication seen in humans, but they can recover at a given dose. It’s a similar mechanism that allows certain cohorts of the human population to also clear the virus.”
The researchers envision their formulation as a prophylactic agent that people would apply to their nasal passages – where COVID-19 most readily enters the body – two to six hours or more before potential exposure. The lipopeptide is robust and stable at room temperature, eliminating the need for refrigeration or cold-chain storage.
The researchers are currently studying the spray’s effectiveness as a therapeutic treatment for subjects who are already infected, as well as its ability to combat other strains and viruses.
The paper, “Intranasal Fusion Inhibitory Lipopeptide Prevents Direct Contact SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Ferrets,” published Feb. 17 in Science.
For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.
