A cure for Common Cold- how far are we from reality ?
Lately we have a spate of respiratory infections. In the January and February of 2023, we had a surge of Influenza and recently the Coronavirus has peaked. The one common denominator of all these infections is their universal character suggesting of Common Cold.
What happened to the dreaded Spanish Flu ?
The notorious Spanish flu which is said to have killed 50 million souls, mellowed down in the subsequent years. Its fourth wave was recorded in 1920. Subsequently it became a seasonal flu and has been largely ignored since then.
Russian Flu of 1890.
It killed rapidly in 1889, 1890 then smouldered on till 1995. We didn’t know what virus were then. The cause remains unknown. One of the four human coronaviruses that causes common cold is traced to this epidemic.
Will the SARS follow suit ?
Why can’t we cure the common cold ?
On an average, we catch common cold about 150 times in our life time. So, we assign various names to this common disease like Runny Nose, Flu or even COVID.
We still don’t have a sure cure for this commonest affliction of the humankind. Why ?
OK, here’s why…
Only 8 Families of different viruses cause this common disease. Out of them, only One family caters to 50% of the world’s all bouts of Common Colds. It is the Rhinovirus.
As you can see, Rhino means nose. So this is not a name but a description of this ancient scourge.
Our Lungs:
We breathe 25,000 time in a day, 365 days a year through our life time. That’s a staggering job description for the two little lungs. Each time we breathe, we take in about half a litre of air and breath them out full. That counts to 12,000 litres every day.
Wait, there’s one more duty.
Along with this air, we also breathe one million virus in every minute. It’s the responsibility of the lungs to stop these 1.5 billion viruses from getting inside our body every day. Staggering, isn’t it?
You have guessed right. They have an effective passport system that decides which item should get in and who is unauthorised. That’s great. Isn’t it ?
A vaccine against Rhinovirus
We have tried to produce a vaccine against the rhino virus for half a century. We would be taking a nasal swab from the patient, culture it and prepare a vaccine. But this vaccine can prevent only the strain of virus from which it’s created. It is like One Lock for One Key. Till date we have identified about 169 subtypes of Rhino Virus.
But Wait, this is further complicated.
Each time the virus comes out of the nose of a patient, it changes a bit. What we call Mutation. Our vaccine may not work against a mutated one. It depends whether the key hole is changed or not. If changed, we call them a Variant.
All the RNA viruses like the Influenza, COVID-19 and HIV are very slippery. We have been able to eliminate Small Pox only because it is a DNA Virus.
All DNA Viruses are gentlemen . They honour their parentage. Not the RNA viruses.
Is there any prospect against the RNA viruses in future ?
May be Yes.
What do bacteria teach us?
While we humans came to this earth only 5 million years ago, bacteria have been living here since 3 billion years. That is, bacteria have been fighting a lone war against the viruses 1000 times longer than the total period we’ve existed on this earth.
What is their technology ?
It is an enigmatic technique: CRISPR.
After mRNA what ?
Till the arrival of Covid-19 pandemic, our strategy to fight a virus is a masterly Wait and Watch policy. The pandemic changed the game totally. We have gone from Defensive to Offensive against viruses these days.
We have been able to rapidly diagnose the exact virus by RTPCR. Today a lab round the corner can take a nasal swab and tell you whether it’s Influenza A or Influenza B. Within the Influenza A, is it H3N2 or H1N1 ? That’s a great achievement.
But the major contribution of the pandemic to modern medicine is validation of the mRNA platform. Till December 2020, mRNA was a Pariah in Microbiology, to be avoided at any cost.
PACMAN:
The Next Platform we are working on is CRISPR. We have been testing Anti viral CRISPR therapy in animal models since long and using them in Plants and Veterinary cases.
Now it is time, to use them in humans.
Preventive Antiviral CRISPR in human cell is known by the acronym – PACMAN. In labs, we have been using them in cases like Chronic Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C cases.
Conclusion:
We have a reasonable success against DNA viruses like Small Pox, Herpes, Hepatitis and Adenoviruses till now. But Common Cold, HIV, FLU, Ebola, Hepatitis C and SARS all are RNA viruses.
It seems our available technology is not adequate to fight the RNA viruses. We need to bring in a revolution in our Strategy. CRISPR ( Like mRNA) has been waiting outside since long for the green signal to be allowed into our therapeutic arsenal.
May be we will need another pandemic to operationalise CRISPR platform in our day to day lab practices and drug manufacturing. But that will be asking for too much.
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 