Researchers at the University of Sheffield have secured £7.5 million in funding from the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) to develop a new approach to protecting people from respiratory viruses, including influenza, COVID-19 and future pandemic threats.
Respiratory viral infections continue to impose a substantial health and economic burden in the UK and worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to have claimed more than 15 million lives and cost the global economy more than £10 trillion. Seasonal influenza continues to infect around one billion people and hospitalise millions annually. Viral infections can also contribute to serious long-term health consequences, including an increased risk of autoimmune, neurological and cardiovascular conditions.
This funding forms part of ARIA's £57 million Sustained Viral Resilience programme, led by Programme Director Brian Wang. The programme aims to create a new generation of medicines capable of providing broad, long-lasting protection against respiratory viruses by engineering the body's innate immune system.
The University of Sheffield team is led by Professor Thushan de Silva, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Principal Investigator, and Dr Ben Lindsey, Clinical Research Fellow, alongside world-leading experts, including Professor Jose Ordovas-Montanes and colleagues at Boston Children's Hospital, and Professor Musa Mhlanga and his team at Radboud University. They will contribute to a major international research consortium involving 11 teams across six countries.
Professor Thushan de Silva said: "Respiratory viruses continue to place a major burden on health systems worldwide, and the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how quickly new threats can emerge and spread. While vaccines remain one of our most powerful tools, they are designed to target individual viruses and can take time to develop and update in response to evolving pathogens.
“Our goal is to understand how cells in the nose and respiratory tract naturally resist viral infection and explore ways to boost the body’s natural responses. By uncovering why some cells are inherently more resilient to viruses, our team hopes to develop new treatments that can make vulnerable cells resistant to infection.
“We’ll investigate ways to activate and prime the genes that respond to many different viruses. By strengthening these immune responses before infections occur, we hope to stop infections earlier and reduce the risk of severe illness, hospitalisation and death.”
This work could ultimately lead to an entirely new class of preventative medicines that provide broad protection against multiple respiratory viruses, reducing hospital admissions, saving lives and helping to ease pressures on health services.
Dr Ben Lindsey added: "This programme gives us the opportunity to pursue a fundamentally different approach to preventing respiratory infections. Instead of reacting to each new virus, we are exploring whether it is possible to enhance the body’s inherent ability to respond to viral threats more broadly.
“By combining advanced technologies with international expertise, we aim to generate the fundamental insights needed to develop entirely new preventative strategies that could improve resilience against future pandemics."
The project will combine a range of advanced technologies, including multiomic single-cell sequencing, respiratory tract cell models, virus infection studies, cell engineering, and antisense oligonucleotide design and manufacturing.
The research has the potential to benefit everyone, but could be particularly valuable for people at greater risk of severe respiratory infections, including older adults and those with weakened immune systems.
Respiratory viruses continue to cause millions of deaths, hospitalisations and healthcare visits globally each year, while the threat of future pandemics remains ever present. Developing new ways to prevent infection could have significant benefits for public health and pandemic preparedness.
The Sustained Viral Resilience programme sits within ARIA's Sculpting Innate Immunity opportunity space. The programme seeks to develop what ARIA calls "sustained innate immunoprophylactics" (SIIPs), medicines designed to provide durable, broad-spectrum protection against respiratory viruses, creating a fundamentally new approach to combating viral disease and preparing for future pandemics.