Queen's University awarded grant to find Covid-19 treatment

Queen's University has been awarded a grant of almost £300,000 to fund work into finding treatment for Covid-19.

The grant forms part of a a £20m rapid research response funded by UK Research and Innovation, and by the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health Research.

£295,626 has been awarded to the university.

Lead researcher and Professor of Molecular Virology Ultan Power is leading a team of researchers. He will direct their expertise to screen existing drugs for activity against COVID-19.

"The thousands of deaths caused by coronavirus have been as a result of how the virus attacks the respiratory system, both directly and through stimulating violent immune responses.

"Our expertise in this area, coupled with the state-of-art models of lung tissue infection in my laboratory enable us to explore in detail how respiratory viruses cause disease.

"This puts us in a unique position to find an urgently-needed treatment."

Research will involve testing a number of drugs used to treat respiratory diseases, antivirals, and drugs which affect the immune system.

The drugs will be applied to the SARS-CoV-2-infected cells to determine whether they are effective in killing the virus or dampening down the violent immune responses that cause lots of damage to the lung tissues.

Professor of Experimental Haematology at The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research Ken Mills, added: "This project arose from an innovative partnership using drug screening methodology used for leukaemia research combined with novel virology expertise and models.

"The integration of these two approaches will provide unique new leads to combat the disease."