Coronavirus: Queen’s University team gets £300,000 grant to find possible treatment

The university has been awarded a grant of £295,626 as one of a first round of projects that will receive £10.5m as part of the £20m rapid research response funded by UK Research and Innovation, and by the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health Research.

Lead researcher Ultan Power is a professor of Molecular Virology at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, Queen’s University.

He is a virologist whose long-spanning career has primarily focused on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the leading cause of severe bronchiolitis in young infants and a major cause of severe lung disease in the elderly and immunocompromised individuals.

Prof Power and his team of post-doctoral researchers, PhD students and a technician will direct their expertise to screen existing drugs for activity against Covid-19.

Prof Power said: “The thousands of deaths caused by coronavirus have been as a result of how the virus attacks the respiratory system, both directly and through stimulating violent immune responses.

“Our expertise in this area, coupled with the state-of-art models of lung tissue infection in my laboratory enable us to explore in detail how respiratory viruses cause disease. This puts us in a unique position to find an urgently needed treatment.”

The research will screen drugs currently approved for human use, including a number of drugs used to treat respiratory diseases, antivirals, and drugs which affect the immune system.

The drugs will be applied to the SARS-CoV-2-infected cells to determine whether they are effective in killing the virus or dampening down the violent immune responses that cause lots of damage to the lung tissues.

Prof Power explained: “Developing new drugs can take a long time and is very expensive. When facing a pandemic, it is crucial that we find treatment options as soon as possible. Our research approach will focus on drugs that are already approved for human use to see whether they can be repurposed to fight Covid-19.”

Ken Mills, professor of Experimental Haematology at The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research and collaborator on the study, added: “This project arose from an innovative partnership using drug screening methodology used for leukemia research combined with novel virology expertise and models. The integration of these two approaches will provide unique new leads to combat the disease.”

Queen’s has a long history in researching viruses, developing diagnostics and finding treatments and vaccines. This includes common respiratory viruses, such as RSV, rhinoviruses, measles and mumps.