COPTER: COVID-19 CONVALESCENT PLASMA THERAPY EXPANDED ACCESS REGISTRY STUDY Professor Greg Fegan was awarded a grant of £2,000 from the alumni-funded emergency Covid-19 Response Fund to do preparatory work on a study looking at possible benefits of treating patients suffering from severe Covid-19 with ‘convalescent plasma’. This is blood plasma donated by patients who have recovered from confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and which might contain protective antibodies. The work carried out involves amending the data capture system used in a large scale US study by the MAYO clinic to collect data for a Welsh based registry that will help scientists better understand if and how convalescent plasma therapy might improve patient outcomes. This work is being done in partnership with the Welsh Blood Service and immunologists at University Hospital Wales who are leading this work.
COMPUTER-AIDED IDENTIFICATION OF NEW TREATMENTS FOR VIRAL INFECTIONS A grant from the alumni-funded Covid-19 Response Fund is enabling Marcella Bassetto, a lecturer from Swansea University’s College of Science, to identify new treatments that could help to prevent the fatal consequences of coronaviruses. Highly pathogenic human coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2, have the ability to send our immune system into over-drive, resulting in aggravated inflammation in the lungs, leading to severe pneumonia, which is responsible for high mortality rates. The reaction is triggered by an interaction between a coronavirus protein and a human protein, which is a key cause of inflammation processes. The aim of the project is to identify agents that could prevent the fatal consequences of these coronaviruses, and new coronaviruses that may emerge in the future. Computer-aided techniques, such as protein-protein docking, molecular dynamics and the virtual screening of a library of existing commercial drugs, are being used to identify inhibitors of the interaction between the proteins. Thanks to alumni support, the best virtual ‘hits’ identified will be purchased and evaluated to assess their ability to prevent severe symptoms caused by coronaviruses from developing.
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