COVID-19: Researchers working on 'nasal vaccine', say nose sprays may work better than injection shots

There are nearly two dozen coronavirus vaccine prototypes from over 150 candidates across the world, that have been approved for human clinical trials, according to a recent report by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Three among these are in the final stages of the human trials. Amid all these, a few groups of researchers working on a 'nasal vaccine' for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have claimed that nasal sprays may prove to be more effective in preventing COVID-19 than injection shots.

A group of researchers from New York's Cornell University, an Ivy League private research institute, has now claimed that the 'nasal vaccine' can prove to be more effective than injection shots when it comes to preventing the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus. Not just this, their report also states that the nasal sprays can work better in efficiently developing the immune response in different parts of the body, in which they are capable of working faster than injections.

The American researchers have informed that in most of the positive cases of COVID-19, the virus finds its way to the lungs of the patient. Due to this contamination, breathing problems, which lead to lethal conditions in the absence of oxygen and if the contamination is not controlled timely. Therefore, in most cases, the lungs are the first in the line of coronavirus infection, which later spreads throughout the body and in the worst cases, the patient to their death.

According to the Cornell University researchers, the coronavirus 'nasal vaccine' is capable of directly affecting the lungs, from where the treatment will rapidly spread throughout the body via the oxygen in the blood vessels. The scientists claim that the vaccine ingested nasally would, therefore, build immunity rapidly, in a much shorter time as compared to injection shots.

More specifically, the vaccine is believed to build the effectiveness of the 'T-cell', a type of lymphocyte, which develops in the thymus gland (hence the name) and plays a central role in the immune response.

One of the most important functions of the T-cells is immune-mediated cell death, and it is carried out in several ways: CD8+ T cells, also known as "killer cells", are cytotoxic – this means that they are able to directly kill virus-infected cells. A different population of T cells, the CD4+ T cells, function as "helper cells". These function by indirectly killing cells identified as foreign.

Therefore, nasal sprays are believed to seriously boost the body's perception of threat to the invading coronavirus and help eliminate it quickly.

The University of Southampton in England has already employed a group of researchers to test the use of a special kind of inhaler in the treatment of COVID-19. The group has claimed that the inhaler, besides mitigating coronavirus contamination in the lungs, is also helping to reduce the viral load. The medicine that has been specifically prepared for this purpose has been named SNG 1001, which contains Interferon beta-1a (also interferon-beta 1-alpha), a special kind of cytokine protein that is believed to boost immune response.

The American researchers are seemingly proceeding along the same line with the research on the nasal sprays vaccine against coronavirus.