Scientists at BioAegis in New Jersey are developing a drug version of the protein gelsolin
It exists in the human body and helps combat life-threatening inflammation like that seen in patients with pneumonia from coronavirus
Their small trial in mild pneumonia patients found that it helped them recover better and faster than those given standard treatments
Since coronavirus turns deadly from pneumonia inflammation, the company wants to start testing the drug Americans with COVID-19
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By NATALIE RAHHAL ACTING US HEALTH EDITOR

A New Jersey biotech firm believes its drug could help save the lives of the sickest coronavirus patients.

BioAegis Therapeutics has been testing a protein called gelsolin to treat pneumonia.

Gelsolin exists naturally in the human body and helps to combat inflammation like that seen in critically ill and dying coronavirus patients.

In early stages, their IV treatment has helped pneumonia patients recover, and scientists at the small firm think that deteriorating COVID-19 patients could benefit from the drug with relatively little risk.

COVID-19 is far more dangerous than others in the coronavirus family – variations that cause the common cold – because it gets into the deep reaches of the lungs and trigger pneumonia.

Coronavirus turns deadly when it reaches the depths of the lungs, triggering pneumonia, severe inflammation that can damage and shut down the lungs. Pictured: A patient is brought to the Brooklyn Hospital Center

Severe coronaviruses like SARS, MERS and COVID-19 ‘have a protein which sticks out of their surface and bind to a human protein in the lung’ BioAegis chief medical officer Dr Mark DiNubile explained in a KYW Radio interview.

‘So now, instead of being a nuisance cold or mild flu-like illness…they’re able to penetrate into the lung and there they can cause a very brisk, injurious sometimes inflammatory response that hurts the host.’

Inflammation from pneumonia can be life-threatening. That same inflammatory response helps deliver immune cells to the site of an infection to fight it, but that can overwhelm the lung and damage the tissue and functioning of the lung.

It’s severe pneumonia inflammation from COVID-19 that turns the infection so deadly without drugs to combat the virus.

The human body is naturally equipped with a number of weapons to fight inflammation.

One of those is gelsolin, a protein involved in the immune response.

But gelsolin gets depleted when the body faces an onslaught of trauma or infection.

That’s where BioAegis’s therapeutic comes in. Dr DiNubile has been studying gelsolin for much of his life and, with the biotech firm, is developing a lab-made version of the protein that he thinks can help combat the destruction COVID-19 does to the lungs.

‘Gelsolin…seems to modulate inflammation,’ said Dr DiNubile.

‘It leaves the blood stream and goes to the site of the infection and debrides the injury.

‘When cells are injured, as [they are] in pneumonia, they rupture their guts, their intercellular contents. [Gelsolin] comes in and cleans that up and it encourages inflammation, but once the debris is cleared up, it’s able to bind to [inflammatory cells] and decrease them.’

The protein is involved the inflammation increase that floods the infection site with white blood cells, but it also helps to sweep up the excess inflammation left over, which can cause secondary injuries to a tissue – in this case, the lungs.