Late-breaking abstract: The use of in vitro human airway epithelia for the development of novel antivirals against human rhinoviruses (HRV)

Viruses such as Human Rhinovirus (HRV) are frequently implicated in exacerbations of some respiratory diseases like COPD and Asthma. Development and use of anti-viral drugs are one of the priorities for major pharmaceutical companies. However, due to restricted viral tropism, animal models and even human cell lines are not appropriate for propagating and modelling viral infections. It is the case for HRV-C sub-types which cannot be propagated in standard cell lines. To solve this problem, we explored the potential of an in vitro tissue culture model of the human airway epithelium (MucilAir™). We report here the efficient infection/ replication of a panel of clinical HRV-C specimens in MucilAir™, including HRV-C2, HRV-C7, HRV-C12, HRV-C15, and HRV-C29. We observed that the virions enter and exit preferentially through the apical surface. As proof-of-concept for drug screening, the efficacy of Rupintruvir, a commercially available anti-viral, was tested in our system: Rupintruvir efficiently inhibited the replication of HRV-A16 and HRV-C15 in a dose and time dependent manner (up to 99% inhibition). These results demonstrated that MucilAir™ is a robust, reliable and relevant tool for antiviral drug development.