As scientists search for new ways to treat COVID-19, a graduate student at the University of Virginia is on the verge of a breakthrough. She was studying a different disease in a different part of the body but found surprising similarities that might be treated with drugs already on the market.
Allie Donlan is a PhD candidate in biomedical science who’s spent months studying a condition commonly known as C. diff.
“C. difficile is a bacteria that infects your large intestine, and it cause a hyper-inflammatory response," she explains. "Our lab has been studying ways to sort of dampen that inflammatory response and protect the patient.”
Some degree of inflammation can help heal the body, but Donlan says too much can be damaging.
"This extremely elevated response by the patient typically leads to things like organ failure or respiratory distress and in very severe cases can even lead to death."
They traced the problem to a protein called Interluken13 that signals the immune system. Donlan recently discovered the same protein and the same hyper-inflammation in patients with the coronavirus.
“We see a lot of them elevated in severe COVID patients the way we would see in severe C. diff patients.”
And she thinks existing drugs to block this response could be good therapies for COVID.
“There are FDA-approved drugs to target those cytokines, and so if we can show by blocking it we protect the host, they can fairly quickly move this into people with the medication that they already have available.”
She’s working in a university lab overseen by Dr. Bill Petri who is also pioneering a vaccine for COVID.
