Can we hope to quickly find a solution to the coronavirus that appeared in China, where it has already killed more than 200 people? If for now, hospitals say they are "ready" to welcome infected patients, they currently only have conventional treatments to manage patients who suffer from fever or breathing difficulties: hydration, vitamin, painkillers, oxygen masks… When will we get an antidote? A drug, a vaccine and when?
As soon as the alert launched by China on the 2019-nCoV, all the laboratories at the forefront in the fight against infectious diseases started to race. Chinese, American, French, Australian. The World Health Organization (WHO) "has also mobilized all its laboratories, says Anne Goffard, virologist and researcher at the University Hospital of Lille (Nord), it is clear, everyone is putting the package at the moment".
And already the announcements with great reinforcement of trumpets fall: "The first experimental vaccines could be tested on humans in three months", implied, a few days ago, Dr Anthony Fauci, a luminary of the National Institute one of the major American research agencies.
"At this stage, we have nothing in our test tubes"
Possible? Anne Goffard's eyes widen: "If they really can, hat! MERS-CoV vaccine trials have been carried out for two years, and it still does not work. This virus, which also belongs to the coronavirus family, has been raging for five years already, ”she notes, doubtful.
At the Institut Pasteur, we are also on deck. But, warns Christophe d'Enfert, its scientific director, from the outset, "Let us be very clear, at this stage, we have nothing in our test tubes. We haven't even isolated the virus yet, cultivation has just started. We cannot therefore hope to have a prototype vaccine, ready to be tested, before six to eight months ”.
It is that a vaccine, designed from an “attenuated virus”, the great specialty of the Institut Pasteur, cannot be invented with a snap of the fingers. "It's long and complex, because once the vaccine formula has been developed, it must then be tested, first to make sure that it is not toxic to the body, then that it is sufficiently effective with everyone. For the Ebola virus, for example, this phase of clinical trials took a year, ”he notes.
Several avenues under study
In short, in the case of the coronavirus, it is completely illusory to hope, in France, in any case, the first tests on humans before "the end of summer", he summarizes. And if everything is going well, nobody will be able to benefit from an injection "before at least a year and a half" he warns. To find the miracle formula, the Pasteur researchers have their plan: "We are going to work on a derivative of the measles vaccine," explains Christophe d'Enfert. The idea is to genetically modify it so that it expresses an antigen corresponding to the coronavirus. We have already used this strategy, with success for chikungunya, this infection transmitted by mosquitoes and it works, ”specifies the researcher.
Another avenue studied by the Institut Pasteur is a drug treatment based on antibodies, as is now done in the treatment of breast cancer. In this case, injections would be carried out which would directly “kill” the cells infected with the coronavirus. But, this path, therefore medicated, François Bricaire, the former head of the infectious and tropical diseases department of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, does not believe in it: “For coronaviruses, we start from too much far away, there is no solid scientific basis for knowing whether a molecule could counter them or not. ”
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So back to the vaccine track, with a big catch: the vaccine, if there is, is likely to arrive after the end of the epidemic, as was the case during that of Sras.
WHO said on Thursday that the epidemic is "a public health emergency of international concern". This could pave the way for an acceleration of procedures. "After accelerated tests on animals, we could do it on healthy people, there too to see their immune reaction, before using it on a population at risk, in particular hospital staff exposed to the risk of contagion", evokes virologist Jean-Paul Gonzalez, associate professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Georgetown University in Washington. This “compassionate” use, WHO has already authorized in the case of Ebola.
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