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Can This New Treatment Stop the Common Cold? (fortune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the endangered-rhinovirus dept.

"Researchers may have identified a compound that can stop some of the most common cold viruses, the rhinovirus, in its tracks, according to a new report published in the journal Nature." An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: The scientists' work is early-stage. But the mechanism it uses to tackle colds is striking. Developed at the Imperial College London, the molecule targets a protein in human cells that cold viruses use in order to replicate and conquer. By targeting this specific pathway, the compound could theoretically be used to thwart most viruses (and since it focuses on human proteins, it may not cause the virus to mutate its way away from danger)...

"The common cold is an inconvenience for most of us, but can cause serious complications in people with conditions like asthma and [chronic lung disease]," said lead researcher Ed Tate in a statement. "A drug like this could be extremely beneficial if given early in infection, and we are working on making a version that could be inhaled, so that it gets to the lungs quickly."

67 comments

  1. Solution by arth1 · · Score: 2

    "A drug like this could be extremely beneficial if given early in infection, and we are working on making a version that could be inhaled, so that it gets to the lungs quickly."

    Just spray all the big cities with crop dusters. What could possibly go wrong?

    1. Re:Solution by sizzzzlerz · · Score: 3, Funny

      Back in the 1980's, eradicating a fruit fly infestation here in California was all the rage. Towards that goal, then-Governor Jerry Brown backed a program to spray malathion from helicopters, at night, over the affected areas. When complaints rose over people being poisoned, they tried to minimize the dangers by pointing out how diluted the spray was. Brown's head of the program, B.T. Collins, on TV, drank a glass of the spray mixture. Literally. Something about proving how safe it was. It was totally worth it to see him, after drinking it, bending over and wretching, live on TV.

    2. Re:Solution by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2

      Brown's head of the program, B.T. Collins, on TV, drank a glass of the spray mixture.

      That reminds me of a British politician when Mad Cow disease was epidemic in England. He stuffed a hamburger into his own toddler's face live on TV, to show how "safe" Mad Cow British Beef was.

      I'd like to hear a follow-up on how the child turned out.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Solution by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      He lives in a pineapple under the sea.

      Spongebrain Squarepants!

    4. Re:Solution by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

      Are you sure you weren't watching Pitch Perfect?

  2. Earth doesn't have it yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the proto -molecule targets a protein in human cells that cold viruses use in order to replicate and conquer.

    CAP === 'counters'

  3. Can EditorDavid... edit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Clickbaity titles are clickbait. Asking your readers to supply the answer you're supposed to give yourself is very much clickbait.

  4. It'll probably stop the common cold for one season by JoeyRox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    After which the virus will find another way to infiltrate human cells. It's hard to win a race against something that has a 200,000 year head start.

  5. Re:It'll probably stop the common cold for one sea by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2

    But we are getting better at it, which a couple completely eliminated and many more on their way to eradication.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  6. They'll say it causes autism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Whatch the anti-vaxer-like morons who'll soon claim that this causes autism. There will be lectures, a youtube channel, a patreon account, and they'll make a fortune once again with the stupidity of the general population.

    1. Re: They'll say it causes autism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's nothing, I have a treatment that will keep lying leftprog hags like Christine Peterson from spreading lies. Costs about a dollar a dose and is guaranteed effective.

  7. No. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How do people not know Mr. Betteridge by now?

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:No. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      How do people not know Mr. Betteridge by now?

      Well you see, years ago, there was this crazy plan to spray a certain compound over towns to eradicate this common but fairly minor public health threat. But they didn't do enough testing of the compound or it's long-term health effects without going forward...

  8. Mutate away from danger? by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Mutate its way away from danger? How does that work? And what if I want that protein to do what is was made to do? And Frankenfish, whatever happened to them?

    1. Re:Mutate away from danger? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mutate its way away from danger? How does that work?

      What the author meant by that seems pretty obvious.

    2. Re:Mutate away from danger? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what if I want that protein to do what is was made to do?

      Those are called side-effects. Nobody ever concerns themselves about them.

    3. Re:Mutate away from danger? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, obvious and obviously wrong. We all know that individual organisms do not mutate themselves away from danger, but instead that the survivors prosper. So, it seems obvious to me that the most likely thing that will happen is that viruses which do not depend on this human protein will survive and prosper.

      Not knowing anything about the subject though, I guess I could be wrong and all viruses, without exception, depend on this particular human protein (which apparently will cause no ill effects on the human by its absence).

    4. Re:Mutate away from danger? by mentil · · Score: 1

      Mutate its way away from danger? How does that work?

      Lamarckian Evolution.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    5. Re:Mutate away from danger? by SlashGodet · · Score: 1
      [strike] Lamarckian Evolution [/strike]

      Epigenetic changes. FTFY.

  9. Question headlines are poor style. ????? by i286NiNJA · · Score: 2

    Question headlines contribute to the normalization of clickbait and many people instantly distrust them
        Just tell us please

  10. Vitamin C by dcollins117 · · Score: 0

    I'm in the Linus Pauling camp of ingesting what some people would consider massive amounts of vitamin C to prevent or ameliorate symptoms of viral ailments. I swear by it based on my own experience. Your mileage may vary and I'd recommend researching the issue before deciding if it's something you should try.

    And yes, I'm aware that some people consider him a quack but I'm not here to debate the issue, just sharing what has worked for me.

    1. Re:Vitamin C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1


      And yes, I'm aware that some people consider him a quack but I'm not here to debate the issue, just sharing what has worked for me.

      This is an anti-science position. If we all took this "it worked for me" position, we'd still be using leaches, bloodletting, and drilling holes in our heads. We need evidence to support conclusions.

    2. Re:Vitamin C by dcollins117 · · Score: 0

      I would tend to agree with you had that been the only source of information I have, but it isn't.

      I'll give you two analogies and see if you can noodle out where I'm coming from. I'm guessing you probably can't, but here goes.
      * It is my experience that antibiotics are helpful to take in the case of bacterial infection.
      * It is my experience that after throwing a heavy object in the air it reaches a maximum height then reverses course and returns to earth.

      Aside from my own experience, I have other reasons to think that scientific principles are at play in each case.

    3. Re:Vitamin C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are many NIH studies that show vitamin C does very little to change the progression or development of colds. It's just a placebo.

    4. Re:Vitamin C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These are called anecdotal (not analogy) stories and do not pass scientific muster.

      You have no idea how a cold will progress. You have nothing to compare it to, each one is different and has a different viral load. You can only measure the R^2 with a medical study that covers a population. Your little anecdotes are precisely why you shouldn't be practicing medicine.

    5. Re:Vitamin C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is an anti-science position. If we all took this "it worked for me" position, we'd still be using leaches, bloodletting, and drilling holes in our heads. We need evidence to support conclusions.

      Science is all about "it worked for me". Studies need to be reproducible so other scientists can try if it also works for them.

  11. Re:Or just take Vitamin D by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've found just keeping my hands away from my face has worked well for not getting sick.

  12. Quarantine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Could the common cold and influenza be eradicated if everyone on earth just spent a week quarantining themselves?

    Or do the viruses move among animal populations as well?

    1. Re:Quarantine by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Could the common cold and influenza be eradicated if everyone on earth just spent a week quarantining themselves?

      Or do the viruses move among animal populations as well?

      That a couple of the biggest flu strains are called "bird flu", what do you think?

      A big problem is that many viral diseases are endemic to animal populations, and require minimal mutations that happen all the time[*] to jump to humans. They never survive long in humans, because they are too aggressive - both killing the host and being killed by the host is bad from the virus' perspective. Being able to infect and spread without doing much damage to the host is a much better survival mechanism, and what happens with most endemic diseases. For the host, it can even be beneficial to have an infection that doesn't cause harm, but out-competes similar infections that would.

      [*]: In part due to the rapid reproduction cycle, and in part because viruses lack the DNA repair mechanisms that more advanced species have.

    2. Re:Quarantine by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      In part due to the rapid reproduction cycle, and in part because viruses lack the DNA repair mechanisms that more advanced species have.

      And in part because when a host is simultaneously infected with two related viruses, the processes called "reassortment" can produce a new virus with genetic material from both "parent" strains. If the combination is, say, a particularly virulent toxin or toxic effect from one parent and an infection protein or protein-network component(s) that enable(s) infection of human tissue from another, a nasty pathogen of non-humans begets a nasty pathogen of humans.

      This is particularly true in the case of influenza, which already has its (RNA) genome divided into eight chromosome-like chunks, making the mix-and-match easy and commo when two strains of flu encounter each other.

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    3. Re:Quarantine by mentil · · Score: 1

      This was covered by Randall Monroe in his 'What If' series. Conclusion: immunocompromised people remain reservoirs of pathogens, since it takes longer than a week for them to eliminate the infection.
      We could probably quarantine those people longer, but that'd include the elderly and infants, and there are members of both groups that can't care for themselves for a few weeks. HIV-positive people might end up in permanent quarantine...

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  13. Re:It'll probably stop the common cold for one sea by Dorianny · · Score: 1

    Perhaps, but it will not be easy. Evolution has been working on our immune-systems as well

  14. we already have a cure by slashmydots · · Score: 3, Informative

    About 18 or so years ago they discovered that zinc prevents viruses from being able to attach to the cells along your mucous membranes and thus stops their ability to replicate. Immediately after, entire cities sold out of it and Zicam got rich. It actually does work.

    1. Re:we already have a cure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh except that followup studies found at best it only shortened the length by a day and that was if you were super religious about taking the doses all throughout but snap, it also turns out there are some nasty side effects possible when taking large doses of zinc including some people who permanently lost their sense of smell

    2. Re:we already have a cure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and Zicam got rich. It actually does work.

      From the wikipedia article: Zicam is... labelled as an "unapproved homeopathic" product.

    3. Re: we already have a cure by slashmydots · · Score: 1

      You know those idiots had bacterial sinus infections right

    4. Re: we already have a cure by slashmydots · · Score: 1

      That's for fda reasons.

    5. Re: we already have a cure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's for fda reasons.

      Yeah, those reasons being lack of scientific evidence:

      But the recent analysis stopped short of recommending zinc. None of the studies analyzed had enough participants to meet a high standard of proof.

      But you probably don't trust the Mayo Clinic or Canada's FDA equivalent.

  15. Death of an industry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People talk all the time about how the oil industry would suppress a water-powered car (disregarding that a water-powered car is at best improbable). Seems to me the industry built around the common cold is much, much, bigger. Not just drugs, but stuff like kleenex and even religion. What will happen if people are healthy all the time? What will sell those non-functioning cures?

    1. Re:Death of an industry? by ledow · · Score: 2

      It's think it's quite well-known that things just aren't this simple.

      1) The common cold is really several hundred different types of the same thing. You can't cure them all, and if you try, another few will pop up.
      2) Though the summary mention asthmatics, etc., the common cold is pretty much not worth treating. Go away, take some tissue, it'll be gone in a day or so. Thus treating it is really a waste of time.
      3) Almost all cold remedies are "over the counter", not "prescription". It's just not worth treating unless it gets more serious. This means people are WILLING TO PAY and the things they are paying for are pretty much USELESS. They relieve symptoms, not cure it. And that's if you're lucky. Many are no better than placebo.
      4) Because of this, they are a huge source of income - cheap and easy to make and regulate, people buy them all the time and use them for every single cold, and do so VOLUNTARILY. No doctor is prescribing them, nor an insurance company covering their purchase (at least in a sensible country).
      5) By "curing" the common cold, you are then taking away a LOT of easy money for the pharmaceutical industry, which people choose to pay VOLUNTARILY, for no real good reason, every time they have a cold, which helps - but also hurts - nobody. When that revenue stream dries up, guess what? They'll move to something else or up their prices on other things.

      Paying for cold remedies funds your cancer drugs, in part. But you don't have to pay that. You choose to. For placebos and the equivalent of some honey in hot water. It's a stupid thing to do, the remedies literally do nothing worth doing, and they are perpetually present in the population - by the time you are symptomatic, you've already got it from and given it to everyone else.

      In that kind of environment, a cure is a nonsense. You'll just force something that's almost completely benign to mutate, and it'll do so very quickly given the number of strains, the transmission rates and the tiny amount of contact required to catch them. And you couldn't cure them all.

      Nobody of normal health loses even a day of work to a cold over their lifetime. (Flu, etc., are VERY different beasts).

      I speak as someone who DOES NOT medicate with anything non-prescription. I don't take headache tablets, indigestion tablets, cold remedies or anything else. I have literally bought one of each to keep in my bathroom cabinet for guests... they will likely be thrown out unopened when people comment that they look like they are out of the Ark.

      Those things cure themselves, or they have simple remedies that don't even need anything beyond what's already in your kitchen.

      But people willingly paying for those placebos are paying profits to a pharmaceutical company that would make up for them elsewhere. On things you DON'T want to make people pay extra for. Like asthma inhalers, and insulin testing kits, and so on. Things that are very common, quite cheap to make and not very dangerous so don't require a ton of testing.

      Curing the common cold will just give you worse colds that are harder to cure, and more expensive medication. That's pretty much why none of the big pharmaceutical firms have bothered to do it.

    2. Re:Death of an industry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > disregarding that a water-powered car is at best improbable

      I can make a water powered car. It will only go downhill though.

    3. Re:Death of an industry? by Shados · · Score: 1

      Go away, take some tissue, it'll be gone in a day or so.

      While it varies a lot (as you said, hundreds of types), the average cold lasts a heck of a lot longer than a day.

      Nobody of normal health loses even a day of work to a cold over their lifetime

      And while you're usually contagious before you even know you're sick, so it's not really possible to ever avoid infecting other people, if you go to work while you have a cold, you're a flat out asshole. Some people are not as healthy and risk serious issues if they get sick from you...others will have to stay home and possibly lose money if they have bad sick day policies (so could you, but its one person vs many), etc.

  16. Missed opportunity by OYAHHH · · Score: 1

    My Mother is 75 years old and has never had a cold. These people should be poking and prodding her. And if she exists then surely she isn't the only person with this resistance out there.

    --
    Caution: Contents under pressure
    1. Re:Missed opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "My Mother is 75 years old and has never had a cold."

      My grandmother hasn't had a cold in over 10 years. Her secret? Not going near anyone by staying buried.

    2. Re:Missed opportunity by OYAHHH · · Score: 1

      Well, I guess that is one way as well.

      --
      Caution: Contents under pressure
  17. Ever fucked a Negress' pussy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are in for a treat. They are bred for fucking, extremely juicy, pulsate like crazy when coming and will please you better than a skinny White bitch.

  18. It's easy to win a race by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    if they other side doesn't know it's playing. Yeah, this is complicated stuff, but we've really only been seriously trying to solve these problems for about 100 years or so. Hell, it wasn't too long ago folks argued against the germ theory. Now, if we can just avoid blowing everything to hell for once and regressing back into primitive superstition...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:It's easy to win a race by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Now, if we can just avoid blowing everything to hell for once and regressing back into primitive superstition..."

      So, human kind and pre-humans have been around for, say 2 million years with our primitive superstition. But modern scientific humans may bomb us back to primitive superstition? Tell me again why primitive superstition is so bad and modern scientific humans are preferable.

  19. Re:I'm sure she's already been poked. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    I'm sure she had something hot happen to her. Not something cold.

  20. Re:It'll probably stop the common cold for one sea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps, but it will not be easy. Evolution has been working on our immune-systems as well

    Yes, and we have a secret weapon: intelligent design. See what I did there?

  21. Wow, thanks for that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I got to see him at the Veteran's Memorial behind Garfield Elementary School (now used for administration and office space for the San Juan Unified School District office that controls most of the strip from walnut ave to garfield ave.

    My mom used to have nothing but good things to say about him. That nature area is fenced off and there is talk of it being sold off once people forget about it.

    Interestingly enough, Jerry Brown's former bodyguard from that term as Governor lives a block down from that nature area/Veteran's Memorial. His daughter used to go to school with a cousin of mine around 30 years ago.

  22. Re:It'll probably stop the common cold for one sea by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    We are very close on polio. It's holding on, mostly due to inaccessible areas acting as reservoirs, but those areas shrink each year. Making good progress on guinea worm too.

  23. Not "the common cold." by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    Just "a" common cold. There are a lot of viruses that can cause the common cold, but as they are essentially identical in symptoms and treatment*, they all get lumped together.

    *ie, there isn't one.

  24. Life... uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > and since it focuses on human proteins, it may not cause the virus to mutate its way away from danger

    FYI, evolution works... it will mutate.

  25. BSD died about 10 or 15 years ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What a shame. But in life there are winners and losers. Sadly, BSD lost. And died.

  26. Hate question headlines? by mentil · · Score: 1

    Want to kill question headlines forever?
    Click here!!

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  27. Re:I'm sure she's already been poked. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, considering the implication that his mother is also his grandmother, it was more likely 'cold' than 'hot'.

  28. The numbers have changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the population has changed, the densities too.

    There's no way that this many humans as today could all survive strictly by sustaining them selves by hunting / gathering.

    Neither viable to have such dense human concentration in the same place, both from the above sustenance point of view and also from an epidemiology point of view: such densely packed population makes it easy for bacteria and viruses to spread.

    Add in the crazy inhospitable area that we live in.

    Our ancestors got along well in primitive societies. But we can't survive without modern science and technology. If we regress, it'not going to be pretty.

    It's going to be like throwing a pack of bananas in bus packed with dozens or rabbid starving monkeys.
    maybe a couple of them could theoretically feed themselves on the banana and survive while the other starves, but in practice probably none will survive the ensuing mayhem.

    Same for us, we probably won't simply peacefully regress to a tiny amount of small groups of hunter gatherer like our ancestors.
    We'll probably manage to go extinct in the chaos during the collapse of civilization.

    And that will be a shame for the knowledge and science that willl disappear with us.

  29. Leave it alone! by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

    Nothing wrong with the common cold, why muck about with dodgy ways to stop something that's harmless?

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
  30. New drug not required by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not sure why more drugs are required. An IV drop is all you need. When I was in Korea, I'd walk into an ER (healthcare costs aren't crazy) and get an IV treatment. $20 and a few hours later you are back on your feet and fully recovered. No body aches, fevers, and chills. I miss this in the states...

  31. Strange markup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do they italicize random words in the otherwise well written article?

    American adults suffer an average of two to three colds per year and children catch even more, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

    Developed at the Imperial College London, the molecule targets a protein in human cells that cold viruses use in order to replicate and conquer.

    (sic)

    Here's another recent article from fortune.com:

    The study also claims that young people who start using marijuana before they use other drugs are more likely to become heavy users and have cannabis-related HEALTH????? problems in the future.

    (sic)

  32. Microbiome by Joey+Vegetables · · Score: 1

    Bad idea IMO. We are symbiotic with our microbiome. Anything that indiscriminately kills the viruses that make up a small but important part thereof, will damage our health, far more than the cold virus possibly can. Same reason antibacterials are a bad idea (beyond that they also help to breed resistant pathogens). Also same reason why antibiotics/antivirals/antifungals in the food supply are a bad idea. It is being learned, slowly and gradually and with a lot of resistance from "mainstream" medicine and Big Pharma, that when we ingest otherwise harmless things that harm our microbiome, even if they do not target or otherwise affect human cells, there are negative repercussions to our health, including very serious ones. Autism, dementia, allergies, autoimmune disorders in general, developmental delays, and higher susceptibility to cancer, metabolic syndrome, and many other disorders are now either known or highly suspected to be related to the microbiome. So, no, I don't think that broad-spectrum antivirals are a good idea, except when they are genuinely and truly needed in order to prevent even more serious harm. Certainly they should not be used to target the common cold, except possibly in immunocompromised individuals or others for whom it would be a far more serious condition than it is for most of us.

    --

    Nonaggression works!
  33. Yes and no, but faster, faster, faster stop! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    abstract: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-018-0039-2

    Yes: The mechanism of action is to prevent coat/capsid assembly and hence replication. It also applies to poliovirus and foot-and-mouth disease. Virus families differ in their capsids and replication strategies. Take out a key part of the strategy will be effective against the whole family.

    No: it's not a treatment yet. It's an in-vitro demonstration. The harder problem is finding something safe and delivering it to billions of cells in millions of people.

    Even harder are the unintended side-effects: if our AI immune systems don't have constant practice with the huge variety of relatively benign viral inputs causing the common cold, they might lose the ability to defend against rarer but more dangerous viruses.

    More interesting to me, the techniques for identifying a weakness and optimizing a target are now usable by even small teams of researchers: "The identification of cooperative binding between weak-binding fragments led to rapid inhibitor optimization through fragment reconstruction, structure-guided fragment linking and conformational control over linker geometry." Could save lives, or enable even a small team to develop unanswerable bio-weapons.