The United Kingdom will launch an unprecedented experiment on humans around the coronavirus. The goal is to find out from how many particles of the virus a person can be infected with. Volunteers aged 18 to 30 are in the process of being recruited and should receive nearly 5,000 euros for an availability of 14 days 24 hours a day. These volunteers will be selected according to their state of health and criteria such as absence. diabetes or obesity. “We need healthy people to avoid severe reactions to the coronavirus as much as possible”, explains Nicolas Noulin, director of HVivo, a company of the company Open Orphan which is carrying out this experiment in partnership with other bodies such as the NHS, the National Health Service, or Imperial College London.
Exposition minimum
The volunteers will be inoculated with the virus in a controlled environment, that is, in the research clinic of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. “This is a wild virus, as it can be found in nature, continues Nicolas Nolin. It was taken from a sample taken in May from a patient who gave his consent. We have take care that it is a clean virus, that is to say that does not contain other pathogens and it has been amplified in vitro. ” During the first phase of the study, volunteers will receive a few virus particles in their noses and will then be monitored on a regular basis to see if they in turn “express” the virus through their respiratory tract. If not, the next volunteers will receive a higher dose and so on until the patients produce the virus, thus indicating the minimum exposure from which a person is infected. The volunteers will be under observation even after having returned home for several months. This first study should allow the organization of other studies of the same kind on the effectiveness of different vaccines and treatment against the coronavirus.
Prohibited in France
According to Nicolas Nolin, this type of experiment, also called an infectious challenge, is no more risky than catching the virus under natural conditions and strict medical supervision should make it possible to control the effects of the virus on volunteers.
The study is funded to the tune of 33.6 million pounds by the UK government, which said it would not have been authorized if it could put additional strain on the NHS. If the British clinical trials ethics body gave the green light this week, this challenge model is banned in France. “It is not authorized to make people fall ill,” specifies Mr. Nolin. However, this model makes it possible to speed up research. In France, to test vaccines, it is necessary to wait for volunteers to be naturally confronted with the virus A cholera vaccine has been brought to market through clinical trials of this kind. ”
The experiment should start in a month and the first results should be communicated five to six weeks later.
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