COVID-19: Scientists get £15m boost to tackle deadly respiratory diseases after COVID research | UK News

Goutam Das doesn’t remember much about five weeks in intensive care with COVID-19.

Mostly nightmares, and shortness of breath.

“It’s almost like if someone put you underwater. That’s the kind of feeling… you just need oxygen.”

Now he’s back to work and puts his challenges behind him. But while in the ICU, Goutam wasn’t completely in vain.

He is one of thousands of people who are seriously ill COVID who gave a sample of their DNA to researchers based at the University of Edinburgh.

Now it’s become a potential source of genes that could be a goldmine for discovering new drugs – not just to treat COVID – but also other severe forms of pneumonia, one of the leading causes of death. in intensive care.

While the pandemic was still at its peak, the team in Edinburgh, led by Professor Kenneth Baillie, used genetic insights obtained from critically ill patients like Goutam to show that the drug treats inflammation Baracitinib will help treat severe pneumonia.

Professor Baillie told me: “In terms of infectious disease and intensive care medicine, to my knowledge this is the first time we have been able to move from a gene discovery to a drug.

Result forming part of Research GenOMICC have identified more than 16 genetic changes that underlie the severe pneumonia that has killed many of those who have died from COVID-19.

Importantly, the same syndrome is fatal due to often fatal conditions such as sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and pneumonia.

Now, Professor Baillie and his team have received £15 million from the Scottish investment firm Baillie Gifford (not related to Professor) to transfer more of their genetic insights to new drugs to tackle the problem. resolve those situations.

The new Center for Pandemic Science at the University brings together the disciplines they used to make their original drug breakthrough under one roof: human genetics to identify drug targets new based on genetic signals found in critically ill patients; a drug manufacturing facility to create experimental drugs against those goals, and a technology team to design better ways to screen those drugs in patients.

And with Professor Kev Dhaliwal, who led that group, I found myself watching a donor lung breathe again.

He told me, the deepest part of the human lung, where oxygen from the air we breathe dissolves into the blood, is like a black hole. “It’s a bit like the outer universe, where we don’t really know what’s going on.”

For that reason, even the most promising drugs identified using a patient’s genetics, may not work as they expect when they reach their intended target deep in lung tissue.

The test setup we’re looking at is designed to overcome that hurdle.

The donor lung of a former smoker that is not suitable for donation, is being filled with air using a ventilator.

Then, a robotic arm was taught to insert an ultrafine fiber microscope deep into the lungs. A parallel tube allows researchers to place their experimental drug in a precise position.

Using the robot allows them to inject many different drugs, in extremely small doses, into the same lung and then return to those locations to see if the drugs have the desired effect.

The next step, once the robot has been optimized on donated lungs, is to bring their robotic technology into hospitals and use it to screen their experimental drugs on patients with severe pneumonia.

“We can lead the optimization, we can choose which one to continue or switch to other experimental systems,” said Professor Dhaliwal.

“That allows us to do this with a small number of patients and get answers very quickly.”