Geelong COVID-19 progress
GEELONG scientists have found human airway cells grown in a laboratory can reliably be used to study respiratory viruses such as COVID-19.
CSIRO researchers say the discovery could help minimise animal testing and fast-track drugs for human clinical trial.
They have found lab-grown cells from the upper layer of the airway to the lungs — the human bronchial epithelium — reliably mimic a live person’s airway response to viruses.
CSIRO research scientist Dr Elizabeth Pharo is the lead author on the findings, published in the journal Viruses.
“Clinical trials for new therapeutics can take significant time and money to establish, only for researchers to frequently discover that the treatment doesn’t work in people,” Dr Pharo said.
“We found that our labgrown airway cells mimic the human airway response to viruses and can be used to quickly test whether antiviral treatments might work against a virus in a real person. This way we can ‘fast fail’ antivirals before they get to the clinical trial stage, helping streamline the more promising ones through to human testing.”
Dr Pharo said the airway model could potentially be used to screen up to 100 antiviral compounds within three months, and CSIRO was exploring ways to further accelerate screening.
It could also help study the characteristics of a virus and how it affected airway cells. But the model cannot be used to study the more complex immune responses required to evaluate vaccine candidates.
The study, conducted at CSIRO’s high containment facility, the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) in Geelong, involved growing donated human airway epithelial cells on porous membranes exposed to air.
Researchers cultured the cells as they developed into the cell types found in human airways.
Dr Pharo said scientists at ACDP were now using this model to characterise how the virus that caused COVID- 19 infected and damaged healthy donor airway cells.