It makes the involvement of British companies such as Hvivo important. Its plan, to test a less harmful virus that is closely related to Covid-19, has caught the attention of Chinese pharmaceuticals firms, who have agreed to co-fund the study. Cathal Friel, executive chairman of Hvivo’s parent company, Open Orphan, said it placed the company at the “forefront of the fight against the outbreak”.
Once Hvivo has secured permission from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, testing will begin. Up to 24 volunteers at a time will be kept in quarantine at Hvivo’s laboratory at Queen Mary BioEnterprises Innovation Centre at Whitechapel in east London. They will be infected with two common strains of coronavirus, 0C43 and 229E, from the same family of viruses, but which cause only a mild respiratory illness. It will allow researchers and pharmaceuticals firms to test the efficacy of new viruses and antiviral medications in a safe environment.
Oxford said volunteers would feel the symptoms of a cough or a cold, which would model those of Covid-19. “If it works on our little virus, it is very likely to work in the real world,” he said.
Before they can become human guinea pigs, volunteers will be quizzed on their medical history and undergo blood, urine and cardiac tests. Participants will visit the lab to be inoculated two weeks before going into isolation for 14 days.
Nurses and doctors who enter the room for regular nasal swabs, blood tests and to collect any dirty tissues (which are later weighed to measure their “viral load”) will be required to wear protective clothing and ventilators. During those two weeks, participants will be unable to exercise or have any physical contact with other people. Even the food they eat will be tightly controlled. The most effective drugs and new or existing vaccines will then be fast-tracked into real-world testing against Covid-19.
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