Nasal spray developed by Australian scientists to be tested as COVID treatment in Melbourne
COVID-19 has given us all the rough end of the pineapple but a chemical in the fruit could be the key to treatment. Scientists are preparing to test it in Melbourne.
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It was an accidental discovery but one that may be a game-changer in the race for a COVID-19 treatment - a nasal spray inspired from pineapple eating pigs.
The Australian breakthrough is already far advanced in its treatment and COVID-19 patients at Royal Melbourne Hospital will begin testing whether the nasal spray stops the virus and prevents it moving from the nose and throat to the lungs within weeks.
If successful it is also planned to distribute to frontline health workers to prevent them catching the virus when they treat COVID-19 patients.
Originally developed to treat cancer the drug BromAc has been found to dissolve the spike proteins the COVID-19 virus uses to infect human cells.
Cancer specialist Professor David Morris from St George Hospital in Sydney who developed the drug has repurposed it into a lower dose nasal spray to treat COVID-19.
“First of all we showed that it could dissolve the spike. Then we did work in France, in a viral laboratory with live virus and we were able to show that after an hour’s treatment with our drug that the virus was not able to infect cells,” he told News Corp.
The drug has already been trialled in much higher doses in 36 cancer patients where it extended their lives and has been found to be safe for human use.
The treatment is made up of two ingredients already used for other purposes in medicine.
The first is an enzyme called Bromelain derived from pineapple stems which is widely used to treat burns patients.
This is where the pigs come in.
“When pineapple residue from manufacturing plants were fed to pigs they didn’t get some gastrointestinal problems like parasites and infections,” Professor Morris said.
These infections rely on attaching to glycoproteins in the pigs stomach to spread and Bromelain appeared to stop that process.
Many gastrointestinal cancers produce mucus a glycoprotein that helps the tumour grow, resist chemotherapy and evade the immune system.
Professor Morris discovered when Bromelain was combined with another drug acetylcysteine together they broke the bonds in the mucus and it fell apart.
When COVID-19 arrived earlier this year Professor Morris noticed its spike protein was also a glycoprotein.
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“We thought that one of our drugs which is already being used in trials BromAc may well have some use in COVID,” he said.
The treatment is likely to only work in the early stages of infection, it is not expected to make a difference once COVID-19 has already spread widely through the body and the person has developed serious illness, Professor Morris said.
It will take just 48 hours to know whether the treatment works, and results from the upcoming clinical trial could be very swift, he said.
Patients taking part in the trial will be given the nasal spray four times a day and will have a nasal and throat swab once a day to check the level of the virus in their body.
The second use of the treatment would be giving it to frontline health workers to prevent them catching the virus when they treat COVID-19 patients, he said.
There are already a million doses of the treatment ready to use, its cheap and Professor Morris wants to produce it in Australia and sell it to the rest of the world keeping the profits here.
Putting his own body on the line in the search for a COVID-19 cure Professor Morris used the nasal spray on himself.
“I squirted the drug up my nose and into my throat. And I did that four times a day for a week. And I had absolutely no side effects,” he told News Corp.
The theory is that once a patient is already infected with COVID BromAc would disable the spike proteins of the virus stopping it spreading from cell to cell and spreading to the throat and lungs and throughout the body.
“We also think that it will prevent the patient infecting others, because if the virus has lost all its spikes, as we’ve seen, and it’s unable to then infect cells then we should protect other people, and the patient from getting the disease,” Professor Morris said.