HIGH-THROUGHPUT SCREENING WITH PRIMARY HUMAN AIRWAY CELLS FOR REPURPOSING DRUGS TO PREVENT COVID-19

Purpose and goal Our aim is to identify new drugs to prevent viral entry in the airways of healthy patients and those with underlying co-morbidities associated with COVID-19. We will use a unique in vitro model of primary human lung airway cells to model SARS-CoV-2 infection using a pseudovirus. We will focus on identifying compounds which can be used prophylactically in patient populations vulnerable to COVID-19 disease. Expected results and effects By identifying existing clinically approved compounds which also prevent viral entry, the initial infection burden or its spread within vulnerable patients can be minimized. Furthermore, we aim to validate a new in vitro model of human airways which is amenable for high throughput drug screening and could be rapidly used in future outbreaks to prevent wide scale spread or in pandemics. Planned approach and implementation Together with our collaborators, we will scale up our human airway model to be used in combination with a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus for modeling viral entry. Next, we will perform medium-high throughput drug screening in human airway models to identify compounds which inhibit pseudovirus entry. Finally, we will validate promising compounds in human airway models which mimic the biology of patients with underlying co-morbidities associated with COVID-19 onset.