The good news is, there may be a way to get the world flying again. The bad news is, it involves coating your nostrils in chicken antibodies.
Scientists are testing a way of providing temporary protection against coronavirus, by turning chickens into antibody production lines, making nose drops they hope will attack the virus.
The approach, which is being tested in humans in Australia, harnesses the ability of chickens to first make antibodies to an infection, and then lay them in an egg. “They are fantastic little factories,” Daria Mochly-Rosen, from Stanford University, said. “And they are cheap, cheap, cheap.”
She and her colleagues have been injecting chickens with the coronavirus spike protein, and then harvesting the antibodies they make from their eggs. They believe that the chicken antibodies may be enough of a first line of defence that they can shield people in high-risk situations.
“Each person would carry enough drops for a day,” she said. “You need two drops in each nostril, every four hours. We envisage you would take it before getting on a flight, going into the office, or — especially — if you are a healthcare worker.”
So far there is no data to show whether the drops are effective, but they are being tested for safety in 48 people, using the laying power of nine chickens.
There are also plans to test the drops in hamsters.
Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said that in theory the approach could work. “There is peer-reviewed and published data showing that a hen can produce more antibodies in its eggs than a rabbit will in its bloodstream over a given period of time.”
He remains to be convinced. “It could have some utility, but it assumes that people are only infected via the nose. This strategy wouldn’t stop infection via the mouth or eyes.”
Antibody therapies are being used at other stages in dealing with the pandemic. In particular, artificially produced antibodies that target coronavirus in the bloodstream are being tested — and were given to President Trump when he contracted Covid-19.
Those antibodies had been “humanised”, meaning they could be accepted by the body. Chicken antibodies can only be used externally.
Professor Mochly-Rosen and her team are not the only group looking at prophylactic protection using nose drops or spray.
A team from Columbia University medical centre has run trials on a treatment in ferrets that uses a molecule called a lipopeptide to prevent infection. It bonds to the spike protein on the coronavirus, preventing it from then entering cells.
Professor Mochly-Rosen said that the ease of manufacture was not the only advantage of the chicken-based approach.
If, for instance, they decided to make a chicken antibody lozenge to coat the throat as well as nostrils, they would expect it to be waved through licensing. “There’s not the same regulatory process,” she said. Technically, it would count as food not a drug. “Everyone eats eggs,” she said.
