IMMUNE TO EVERYTHING

Researchers are edging closer to a universal antiviral drug, a single medicine that could - if it works - treat every virus known to man and head off the next pandemic before it even starts

- by IAN TAYLOR

Imagine coasting through flu season with barely a sniffle. Or brushing off COVID, no matter how many times it mutated. Imagine, in fact, that no virus can harm you, from chickenpox to Dengue to HIV. Even the deadliest viruses we know of, like rabies or Ebola, don't cause you serious problems.

For a handful of people, this seems to be the case. Anyone with a specific and rare genetic mutation benefits from a superpowered side-effect: they fight off viruses with ease, to the extent that most of the time, they don't even know they've been infected.

The mutation in question causes a deficiency in a key immune system protein called ISG15. In turn, this leads to a mildly elevated systemic inflammation in their bodies – it's this inflammation that seems to subdue any virus that tries to get past.

When Dusan Bogunovic, professor of immunogenetics at Columbia University in New York, first discovered the mutation 15 years ago, he didn't realise what was in front of him.

“I don't know that ‘ignorant’ is the right word, but I was unaware of this possibility for the first three years after we discovered it,” he says. “I wasn't studying viruses.”

It was only when he took a job at a lab that was studying viruses that it dawned on him. He remembers going to seminars to learn more.

“That was the ‘Eureka moment’,” he recalls. “That was when I suddenly thought: ‘Wait, the autoinflammation profile in these rare patients is 100-per-cent antiviral!’”

Sure enough, when he went back from the seminars and studied the ISG15 patients' immune cells, Bogunovic found they had encountered several viruses during their lives, including flu, measles, mumps and chickenpox. Only these patients had never shown any of the symptoms associated with them. Their immune systems, in a permanent state of high alert due to their genetic mutation, had never allowed the viruses any kind of foothold.