By Three professors at the University of Southampton school of medicine have made a “major breakthrough” in the treatment of coronavirus patients and become paper millionaires at the same time.
The professors :Ratko Djukanovic, Stephen Holgate and Donna Davies, almost two decades ago discovered that people with asthma and chronic lung disease lacked a protein called interferon beta, which helps fight off the common cold.
The trio figured out that patients’ defenses against viral infection could be boosted if the missing protein were replaced.
The academics created a company, Synairgen, to turn their discoveries into treatments. It floated on the stock market in 2004, but a deal with AstraZeneca to treat viral infections in asthmatics fell through, and the shares collapsed.
Fast-forward a few years to the coronavirus pandemic, however, and suddenly any potential therapeutics for breathing difficulties were in high demand.
Richard Marsden, Synairgen’s chief executive, said the company had been deeply involved in a trial using the interferon beta drug to help people with chronic bronchitis or emphysema. “[But] when the coronavirus pandemic emerged, even back in January we realised that we might have an important role to play in defence against this virus,” he said. “So we set about getting a clinical trial set up in February and March in anticipation of the virus coming to the UK, and it did. The trial was in place when people started to fill the hospitals up.
“It is part of the coronavirus’s strategy to interfere with the immune system and suppress interferon beta, so if we can put it back in, we can have dramatic effect.”
Results of the initial trial, published this week, showed that coronavirus patients in hospital given a special formulation of the professors’ interferon beta drug, called SNG001, delivered directly to their airways via a nebuliser, were two to three times more likely to recover than those given a placebo.
The study of 101 people found that the odds of patients developing a severe version of the disease were reduced by 79%, and their breathlessness was also “markedly reduced”, the company said.
As soon as the clinical trial results were published, on the morning of 21 July, the shares spiked, and by lunchtime had risen by 540%. Djukanovic, aged 65, a professor of medicine, saw his 0.56% stake in the company jump in value in one day from about £300,000 to £1.6m. The 0.59% stake held by Holgate, 73, a professor of immunopharmacology, rose to £1.7m. It is understood that Davies, aged 67, the third founder and a professor of respiratory cell and molecular biology, holds a similar-sized stake through a separate company.
