New Promising Nose Spray May Prevent COVID-19

May, 2022 - By WMR

The new spray successfully prevented infection in early animal trial, now scientists are planning to start human trials of this nasal spray

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus caused the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still a public health crisis. Even after the mass vaccination campaigns, the efficiency of vaccines is decreased owing to emergence of variants of concern. Now a group of researchers at Cornell University and the University of British Columbia showed how a nasal spray can efficiently prevent infection from SARS-CoV-2 virus. The team tested the new nasal spray in animals where it proved to be effective and now the team is working on optimizing the spray and move further to human clinical trials in the coming future.

Recently a new molecule dubbed N00385 was discovered, which was found to inhibit the entry of COVID-19 virus particles into animal cells. In this novel study, the scientists tested the N-0285 with its intranasal dosages in a genetically engineered specific mouse model that expresses human receptors. The team found that the spray was effective at protecting against the SARS-CoV-2’s original strain, and the variants which also included Alpha and Delta. The new nasal spray however, not yet tested against Omicron, yet according to the researchers it should provide same results against this variant too. Moreover, the new nasal spray also served as an effective treatment as it reduced the disease after administering the animals with it.

Furthermore, this research requires a lot more work for establishing the safety of this novel molecule in humans, thus, it is expected to move ahead slowly. However, the scientists indicated that this molecule is a promising one as it could be used for targeting various viral infections including influenza and other coronaviruses that has the same mechanism where they enter on cellular level.