Virus and Bronchial Epithelium in Children and the Elderly

Summary

The objective of the VIRCHILLD project is to identify age-related modifications of the bronchial epithelium physiology that account for differences in the response and susceptibility to respiratory viruses. Epidemiology and cell-based data show that respiratory virus infections differentially affect children, adults or the elderly populations.

The current worldwide pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 clearly highlighted this notion with a large part of the deaths occurring in the elderly population and very few deaths amongst children. This may be linked to a decreased transmission and/or viral load with SARS-CoV-2 in children compared to adults and elderly. Less in the public eye is the observation that other major respiratory virus targeting the bronchial epithelium (BE) such as rhinovirus (RV) and adenovirus (AdV) cause important clinical feature in children and have a much lower incidence in adults and the elderly populations, which is the opposite to the situation with SARS-CoV-2. Based on this remarkable discrepancy between respiratory viruses the investigators hypothesize that intrinsic age-controlled properties of the respiratory epithelium under resting physiological conditions determine virus susceptibility and virus propagation.

Conditions

• SARS-CoV-2

Interventions

BIOLOGICAL

SARS-CoV-2

Circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2 (including variants of concern) were already collected, cultured and purified. The Wuhan reference strain will be used in the VIRCHILLD study to infect cells.

BIOLOGICAL

Adenovirus (AdV)

Infection with C-type viruses (e.g. HAd-C5) using bronchial epithelium from adult donors

BIOLOGICAL

Rhinovirus

RV is a member of the picornaviridae family; small non-enveloped viruses with a single strand positive RNA genome protected by an icosahedral capsid. They are divided in more than 160 serotypes classed in subtype A, B and C. RV-A and RV-C infections will be used in the VIRCHILLD study

BIOLOGICAL

No Intervention

no infection

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University Hospital, Bordeaux

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Michael FAYON, MDPhD · University Hospital, Bordeaux

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-10-28

Primary Completion

2025-04-28

Completion

2025-04-28

Countries

• France

Study Locations