At-home COVID treatment delivers drug directly into lungs: Synairgen CEO

As more strains of the coronavirus emerge, there is a need for more treatments. One company is working on an at-home respiratory treatment that is currently included in a U.S. government-sponsored clinical trial.

Richard Marsden, the CEO of Synairgen, explained how the treatment works on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” Tuesday.

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RICHARD MARDSEN: “Every virus has to have a bag of tricks to evade the immune system. And viruses want to jump into cells, take over the cell, burst that cell open and spread lots of virus particles from cell to cell and person to person. And this particular virus is SARS-CoV-2 virus is very good at suppressing the production of a key antiviral protein that we all make when we get viral infections and if you don't make enough of this protein because the virus is suppressing it, then you are now super vulnerable to that viral infection. 

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We deliver our drug, which is this protein called interferon beta, directly into the lungs through a nebulizer ... And by delivering the drug directly into the lungs, we're hoping to help those lungs handle the virus better. So we won't stop the infection from taking hold in the upper respiratory tract but if we can protect the lungs then hopefully we'll stop you from getting very breathless and prevent them from being hospitalized. 

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The great news here is that the Operation Warp Speed infrastructure has funded this trial called the ACTIV trial, and we've been invited to participate in that in terms of timing all I can say is that these programs, these Operation Warp Speed programs have delivered a breakthrough and really important clinical data very quickly. So, you know, this is a really good machine that is taking on the development of this drug for us.”

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