WEBVTT - The Common Cold: A Viral Mystery 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:06.640 It starts with a little bit of a sore throat, 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:09.920 then a runny nose, headache, you feel tired all day, 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.080 You got a cold. Cold viruses infect most of us 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.480 on average two or three times a year, and we 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.640 just accept colds as a fact of life. But what 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:20.560 if we didn't have to. 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:26.920 A Ministry of Health research unit at Harvard Hospital Salisbury 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:31.280 has been investigating the common code and volunteers human guinea 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.840 pigs have been living there in pairs for ten days 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:34.320 at the time. 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.720 That's an old movie tone newsreel, and it's about the 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.839 Common Cold Unit. The Common Cold Unit or CCU was 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.000 a scientific institution that opened in the UK in nineteen 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:51.000 forty six, and for decades, volunteers went there in order 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.480 to be infected with the common cold. Then researchers would 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:57.440 study what happened next. Their ultimate goal was to figure 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.280 out which virus or viruses caused colds and whether science 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:05.440 could finally make the common cold disappear for good. The 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.560 Common Cold Unit became pretty famous in its day. Volunteers 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:10.520 went back a year after year. Some of them even 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.360 fell in love there, got married, and more than a 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:17.320 few famous scientists started their careers spraying cold viruses up 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:21.199 people's noses. In the end, the CCU failed to achieve 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:23.640 its main goal. It did not produce a cure for 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.119 or a vaccine to prevent the common cold, but it 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.360 did lay the groundwork for a lot of what we 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.839 know today about viruses, and the stories of what scientists 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:35.520 learned at the Common Cold Unit and how they learned 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:39.839 it are amazing and delightful. Snotty tissues may never again 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:46.760 play such a pivotal role in scientific research. I'm Jacob Goldstein, 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.440 and you're listening to Incubation, a show about all the 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:53.200 other viruses. In previous episodes, we found out how science 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.720 progressed from Edward Jenner's early work on smallpox to the 0:01:56.760 --> 0:01:59.720 development of the polio vaccine to the twenty first century 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.240 design of a vaccine for RSV. But even after all 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:07.400 this progress, we're still missing some simple answers. Today we're 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:09.280 going deep on the common cold. We're going to talk 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.480 about what we know and what we don't know about 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:13.960 the many viruses that cause it. A lot of what 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.080 we do know comes from research on human volunteers in 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:19.720 the UK who went to the Common Cold Unit and 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:23.520 signed up to get sick. Our first guest today is 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.600 Katie David. She's a curator at the Science Museum in 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:30.000 London and she oversees a collection that includes vintage snotty 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:32.840 tissues and other artifacts from the CCU. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:37.680 I've worked at the Science Museum for quite a few 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:41.120 years and the first time I encountered the Common Cold 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.880 Unit was about ten years ago. And we've got this 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:48.679 amazingly large object store in West London, and you see 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:50.720 all sorts of weird and wonderful things. But I was 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:53.079 in one room and I could see this like really 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:55.960 flowery armchair and it just sort of struck me as 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.360 so strange. You know, it's not an X ray machine, 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:01.000 it's not a stethoscope. I sort of did a bit 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.720 of digging and basically it was an armchair from the 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.960 Common Cold Unit. It was part of the volunteers, the 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.359 kind of furniture they would have sat on and there 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:13.160 that's how I first discovered this weird and wonderful place 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:14.200 called the Common Cold You know. 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.679 It plays so amazing then even just a cheer from 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.720 there belongs in a museum. Absolutely, it's okay. The Common 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:23.560 Cold Unit was set up in this basically this abandoned 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.480 hospital in the British countryside right after World War Two? 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:29.600 How does this happen? Like, what's the story there. 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.520 There's a British virologist called Christopher Andrews, and he has 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.680 been over to the States and seen this amazing research 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.720 with American scientists who are using chimpanzee models, which appear 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.480 to be the only animal model at that point where 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:49.000 you could transmit the common cold and start investigating it. 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:54.000 But you know, Britain, post war, chimpanzees are not easy 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.720 to come by to do this type of research. So 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:00.120 what's definitely the next best thing are human volunteers, So 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:01.480 human guinea peas. 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:03.560 I thinks we're basically not we don't have enough of 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.880 a research culture to do chimpanzees, but we. 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.760 Don't have people, well we have people, we have medical students, 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:10.920 which are definitely know one of the next best things. 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.520 And so he sort of is aware of this, you know, 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:17.279 infectious disease hospital, and it's so isolated that he sees 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:20.120 it as an opportunity that actually you can start carrying 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.360 out these volunteer medical studies into the common cold. So 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:26.919 in July nineteen forty six, so just a few months 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.520 after this site gets set up, they're welcoming their first 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.560 volunteers to be infected with the common cold and to 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:33.800 see if they could transmit it. 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.200 Why set up a whole unit just to study the 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:38.240 common cold? 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:40.240 I mean, the common cold just seems I mean, it 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:43.880 almost seems relatively trivial to us today. But it's not 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.599 that long after the Spanish influenza epidemic, so there's a 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:51.720 lot of research into influenza and the cold and viruses 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:55.560 and bacteria in general. In the nineteen thirties, you know, 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:57.960 coming out of the war, there's a real need to 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.960 rebuild Britain and Europe, and there's real worries about productivity 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.159 in Britain, like so many people are taking sick days, 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:08.279 they're going absent from work, and actually, is there a 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.400 really easy way we could solve what was causing the 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.120 common cold, find a cure and encourage more people to 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.880 stay healthy and not seek how expensive medical visits to 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:20.160 doctors at the time. 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.359 And there is this real problem every year everybody is, 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:25.120 you know, missing a week of work because they're sick 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.280 with the cold. If we could fix that, is this 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.080 moment of faith in science and progress, right, If we 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.160 could find a cure for the common cold. That would 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:36.800 be a huge boon to productivity. 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.960 Absolutely. I mean there's this real spirit of trying to 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:43.160 solve these issues. You know that they're identifying influenza, that 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:45.719 were coming up with new vaccines for lots of conditions. 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.720 Right, maybe we could find a vaccine so everybody, every 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.240 when your baby you get a shot, you never have 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:52.160 to get a called. 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.880 Amazing, absolutely and who wouldn't take that option if you could? 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.440 I would take it now in a heartbeat. So what 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.000 did scientists know? How did you know humanity know about 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.400 the common cold at this time in nineteen forty six? 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:06.720 Do we know it was virus? Do we know which virus? 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:09.960 So really little. There was definitely inklings that it was 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.039 some form of virus, but very little known about it 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.159 at all. It was very much this open question to 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.960 understand what was causing the common cold? Was the one cause, worsler, 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:23.679 multiple causes? How is it being transmitted? They were also 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.560 interested in like in terms of causes, like common myths 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:28.440 and things. If you stand out in the rain and 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.919 the cold, does getting a chill cause the cold? You know, 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:33.680 there were lots of really important questions to explore. 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.719 So we got the questions we got the place. The 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.360 Common Cold unit is open. How does it work? 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:45.920 So the research team advertised for volunteers. They send out 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.800 adverts into local newspapers to say things like ten day 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.080 free break in the autumn and winter. You might not 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.479 win a Nobel prize, but you will help find a 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:55.599 cure for the common cold. 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:56.200 Okay. 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:58.360 The trials sort of lasted for around by two weeks, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.440 and they take thirty volunteers would be split into two 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.280 groups and they would live in these little huts on site. 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:09.200 So married couples could stay in the same little volunteer flat, 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:13.640 but unmarried couples absolutely, you know, prohibited. And really as 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.840 a volunteer, this was like an amazing opportunity to almost 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.360 have a lovely holiday stay, a relaxing stay. You would 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:22.680 be paid a very small amount of money about one 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.400 pounds seventy five a week or something like that. You'd 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:27.640 have your travel expenses paid, but then you'd get three 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:30.640 meals a day. It was very relaxing. You know, you 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.920 could read, you could study, you could go for walks 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:34.200 on the countryside. 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.880 And let's be clear, you know, post war Britain is 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.360 a tough place economically. I mean Britain won the war, 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:42.960 but it got destroyed absolutely. 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.600 I mean, rationing doesn't end. So like the mid nineteen fifties, 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.120 people really want to volunteer and help Britain and you know, 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.720 it really feels like they're doing something something good. 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.160 Let me ask you this, Okay, So that's the fun side. 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.760 You get three meals in your tocula country. What do 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:58.360 you got to do? What do you got to do? 0:07:58.440 --> 0:07:59.800 If you're a volunteer there. 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.000 You turn up, Say, if you turn up on a Wednesday, 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:04.720 you'd first have to quarantine for three days to make 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.440 sure that you weren't infectious with you know, a cold already. 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:11.200 So assuming after those three days you were fine and well, 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:16.040 you would then be infected with somebody else's nasal washings. 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:18.960 How are you infected with someone else's nasal washings? What 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.040 does that actually mean? 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:22.440 So often it would be like just through nose swabs, 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.120 but sometimes it was sprayed. They'd be inventing all sorts 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.280 of crazy apparatus to replicate a sneez droplets and things 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:29.640 like that. 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.120 Basically for a lot of people that the scientists. 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.679 Give you a cold, yeah, absolutely, and then for the 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.680 next week you're just observed. And so some people after 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:41.200 a couple of days would develop a cold, and the 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:45.240 researchers would collect all their snotty tissues and try and 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.880 incubate and analyze what the material in those snotty tissues, 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.480 and then other people never developed anything and had a 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:55.320 very thoroughly pleasant stay. I mean really only about a 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:59.199 third of the volunteers would ever get a cold, so 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:01.480 actually you had a pretty good chance not getting one 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.840 at all during the process, and after about ten days 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.400 you were released back to your regular life. 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.360 Let's talk about they had this goal of minding a 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:13.400 cure or a vaccine. They thought they might do it 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.000 in a few years. Spoiler alert they didn't. But let's 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:19.640 talk about some of the work that they did there. 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:21.400 Let's talk about this not experiment. 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:23.800 Well, one of the amazing things is like actually quite 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:26.720 a few famous or sort of really important people worked 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.360 at the Common Cold Unit, and one of them was 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.800 James Lovelock, British scientist, and in his early research he 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.280 was an incredible engineer. He could come up with amazing 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:39.959 solutions to shricky experimental problems, and he invented this nasal 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.680 dropper system. So if you imagine like a thin tube 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:47.440 strapped your nose that would drop a solution that contained 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.320 a fluorescent dye within it. It was sort of they're 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.800 simulating a drippy nose essentially. And then the experiment was 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.800 to simulate, you know, just like a normal everyday activity. 0:09:57.480 --> 0:09:59.960 The participants were playing cards, we're making cups of tea, 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.600 just hanging out for the evening. And at the end 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.080 of you know, a few hours of just normal at 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.240 day to day interaction, they turn off the lights and 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:09.480 put the fluorescent lamp on and they could see the 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.000 traces of how this sort of fluorescent die had been 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:17.400 transmitted all across different surfaces, across the playing cars, cups, cups, kitchen. 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:21.440 It really revealed that act of transmission, that transmission. It 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:23.880 wasn't just sort of through inhalation alone. 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:27.200 It's through we're all disgusting and we all get our 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:33.360 snot over each other all the time. Basically, you mentioned 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.600 that at the Common Cold Unity they studied whether being 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:40.160 cold makes you catch cold. Was there a particular study 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:40.960 you were referring to. 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:46.400 They had participants who stood outside in the cold and 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:50.160 the wet yet to test this theory about whether that 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.240 made them more predisposed to developing The Common Colder and 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:54.600 apparently they disprove that. 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.840 So, just to be clear, standing out in the cold 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:00.840 does not make you more like to get a cald. 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:04.480 Just for my mother and for everybody's mother, being cold 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:05.640 does not make you catch. 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.959 A cold, according to the Common Cold Unit studies at 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:09.679 that point in time. 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:12.240 Yes, my mother is a physician, by the way, I 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:14.800 feel guilty saying that because she knows, but she still 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.560 always wanted me to bring a cod So we know 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:21.559 they didn't find a cure or a vaccine for the cold, 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:23.920 or if they did, they didn't tell anybody because we 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.960 don't have one. But what did they figure out? 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.600 So people have construed the Common Cold Unit as a failure, 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:33.960 like a research failure, but over its sort of forty 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.760 odd years, the unit produced over one thousand research papers. 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:39.960 And they started off in these early days trying to 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:45.040 find ways to grow the common cold viruses in laboratory cultures. 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:47.920 So they worked that out. They revealed lots of insights 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.600 around transmission. But really what they did that was exciting 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:56.080 is that they discovered rhina viruses and coronaviruses through all 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.400 the sort of volunteer nasal snots collecting they were doing 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:01.480 in analysis so this is a. 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.160 Big deal, right, And I understand that the discovery of 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.320 coronavirus in particular is actually it's actually kind of an 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:08.199 interesting story, right. 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:12.320 So there was an amazing researcher virologist called David Tyrrell 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.480 who started off in nineteen fifty seven as a researcher 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:19.319 at the Common Cold Unit, and he's doing really interesting experiments. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.120 We all know school kids are such a reservoir of colds. 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.840 And essentially every parent knows that. 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.240 Yes, every parent knows that. So they invited school groups 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:32.400 to have parties at the Comic Cold Center and again 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:37.160 would collect nasal specimens from particularly snutting school kids. And 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.280 after one of the samples from I think about a 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:44.560 twelve year old schoolboy in nineteen sixty, David Terrell was 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:48.400 researching this specimen and after sort of conducting lots of 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:51.640 different experiments trying to identify what type of virus it was, 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:55.199 it just didn't match to anything he already knew that existed. 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.120 And so by about nineteen sixty five he publishes his 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.280 first paper saying, oh, I've identified this unknown virus. 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.880 To be clear, he knows that it's causing the cold, 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:05.960 but he can't throw it. He can't see it. 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:08.040 Yeah, absolutely, so he can't see it's but then he's 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.760 put in contact with this amazing virologist called June Al Misa. 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.560 She was born in Glasgow, lived in Glasgow tenements. Her 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.520 dad was a bus driver. As a young girl, her 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:21.920 six year old brother died of dip theory, so you know, 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.120 she's got really close contact with infectious disease and that 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:27.360 sort of inspired her to want to get involved in 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:28.240 a medical career. 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:31.360 So I was reading about her when I was getting 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.400 ready for this interview, and I understand that what she 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:37.160 ends up doing is electron microscopy, which at the time 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.880 it's this relatively new technology. Right, tell me more about that. 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.600 She just develops this amazing ability to be able to 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.520 take virus images. A lot of people describe it like 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:49.400 gardening it. You know, there's still an art and a 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.320 kind of being. It's like being green fingered. To get 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:55.600 those images took a lot of preparation and she just 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:58.360 was able to do it. She's taking ones of rubellah 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.199 for the first time. That causes German Me and David 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.000 Terrell from the Common Cold Unit becomes aware of these 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:07.520 amazing images and her work using an electron microscope, and 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.319 so he sends her a this sample of this schoolboy 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.800 snotty tissue and this virus sample, and she's able to 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.960 prepare it and start taking images, and so for the 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.880 first time, she images the first ever coronavirus. 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.400 So he sends her whatever snotty tissues, the samples from 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.640 the schoolboy with the mystery virus. And what does she 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:29.160 see when she looks at it. 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:34.000 So nobody's visualized a coronavirus before, so she's looking at 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:36.160 it for the first time using an electron microscope, and 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:39.600 so she sees the slightly round virus particle. But what 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.840 makes it really different looking is these little projections that 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.960 come out of it, these little spiky projections. She described 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.000 it as like a solar corona, so like the corona 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.600 you get around the Sun. And it was through these 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.840 images that she and David and a couple of other 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:58.160 virologists agreed on calling this new type of virus they 0:14:58.160 --> 0:14:59.560 identified coronavirus. 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:02.720 So that sort of stylized image that we all saw 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:04.760 a million times over the past three years, of the 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.240 little circle with the little lines the spikes coming out 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.760 of it. She was the first one ever to see. 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.240 That, yes, she was absolutely the first person to see that. 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:15.880 Why does it end up being a big deal that 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:17.600 they discovered the coronavirus? 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:22.480 Obviously, imaging the coronavirus has become a much bigger deal 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:27.000 since the pandemic is much more important to us now, 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.400 But I think it's also important in terms of understanding 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:31.680 the history of the common cold and the research and 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:35.160 the unit as well. So many different viruses cause the 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.360 common cold. There isn't one single cause, and so by 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:42.160 understanding that there were rhina viruses and coronaviruses and all 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.920 sorts of different viruses causing the cold, it just complicates 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:48.640 the picture. It just sort of shows that it's really 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:50.360 hard to cure the common cold. 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.360 So what is the end of the story of the 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:54.280 Common Cold Unit. 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.040 It's incredible that the Common Cold Unit ran for over 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:01.520 forty years, so eventually by nineteen eighty nine they welcome 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:05.880 their last volunteers and essentially the Medical Research Council decide 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.640 to stop funding the site of the Common Cold Unit. 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:11.120 So it's amazing in a way that it's still going 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.240 on in the eighties, maybe because I'm old enough to 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:15.760 remember the eighties and it's like, sure, oh, the forties. 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:17.880 This is some weird old timey thing from a long 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:20.280 time before I was born, but that it was going 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:23.880 on in the eighties when like you know whatever, there were. 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:26.200 Yeah, hugely like genomics and like it. 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.800 It seems kind of anachronistic by that point, right. 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.560 I mean, the problem of the common cold unit, particularly 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.640 it starts off being in such an isolated environment, which 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.280 was such a great thing for this kind of isolating 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.720 and quarantine study, but actually it was very isolated from 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.200 the kind of developments within medical research at that time. 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.440 I know, these amazing other research facilities being built, and 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.120 so it did begin to be seen as this sort 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:57.840 of slightly anachronistic research model in that way. 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:02.880 So when we zoom out and think about this interesting place, 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:04.239 what should we make of it? 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.040 I mean, for me, I think it's a brilliant story 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:12.280 of the willingness of people to volunteer and give their 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:17.200 bodies and time to try and solve some medical challenge. 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.040 And I think it just demonstrates that, you know, often 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.280 we're after a quick fix, you know, we want things 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.040 to be easily solved by a vaccine or a simple drug. 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.880 Yeah, and I mean, just how complex the common cold 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.560 is seems like one of the one of the real 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:35.520 discoveries of the Common Cold Unit. Anyway, it was great 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:37.600 to talk with you. Thank you so much for your time. 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:38.520 Thank you. 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.000 Alas, the Common Cold Unit did not in fact get 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.399 rid of colds forever, but scientists still draw on that 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:51.520 research to understand how virus is spread and how they 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:55.320 work inside our bodies, how cold viruses make us feel sick, 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.200 and what we can do to make ourselves feel better. 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:09.440 That's when incubation returns. One of the things that those 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.399 researchers in the UK discovered as they studied the common 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.560 cold for decades, there is no single culprit. In fact, 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.840 we now know that more than two hundred different viruses 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.639 cause this group of symptoms that we lump under the 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:26.680 term common cold. The biggest group of viruses is called 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.160 rhinoviruses rhino from the Greek for nos like in rhinoceros. 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:35.320 Scientists now believe that rhinoviruses cause somewhere around half of 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.199 all colds. There is in fact a good chance that 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.359 at this very minute I am fighting off a rhinovirus. 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.200 So lucky me as host of this show, I get 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.720 to call up a leading expert on rhinoviruses and ask 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:52.159 him for some explanations, some advice. The expert's name is 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:57.840 Gary MacLean and he's an emeritus professor at London Metropolitan University. 0:18:57.920 --> 0:18:59.440 What should I do if I don't want to get 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:00.639 a cold? 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:03.399 Stay away from people all the time. 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.800 Okay, not going to work for me. So let's just 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:11.600 talk about the viruses that cause the common call. Just 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:13.960 give me the basics. What do we know about these viruses. 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:19.240 They're parasites and they're not cells. They're neither dead nor alive. 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:25.200 They're really really small, So even for a virus, that's right, 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.600 Even for a virus, if we stick to rhinovirus here, 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.560 those are about thirty nanometers in diameter. If you look 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:36.680 at a clenched fist, a normal sized clenched fist, the 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:40.000 virus about a million times smaller than that. There's lots 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.679 of those viral particles that are then delivered to the 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:48.440 correct area, which is your nose. Those viral particles will 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.119 then attach to the surface of the cells. Now, the 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:55.840 surface of cells is quite a sugary, sticky, gluggy mess, 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:01.960 and those viral particles will latch on to really specific 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:06.240 parts that project from those cells. It'll kind of be 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.280 swallowed into the cell and that's what the virus. 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:15.359 Wants to happen. Okay, so called virus, a rhinovirus. It 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:19.719 comes into my nose, It latches onto some cells up 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.080 in my nose, perfect fit. 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:26.240 What happens next, It's basically the membrane of the cell 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:28.679 kind of folds in on itself and it drags the 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.080 virus in with it, and then the genome can then 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:35.480 start doing what it does, and that's basically making copies 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:39.600 of itself and copies of new virus particles. 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:43.400 And specifically, it's hijacking my nose cells to make copies 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:44.080 of the virus. 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:48.680 Absolutely right, that's what it does. Yes, So why do. 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:53.280 I feel like ass when that happens to me? 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:56.920 Well, it takes a few days. This period it'd often 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.840 referred to as an incubation period, where there's a little 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:04.439 bit of time in between the infection first taking place 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:10.000 and noticing actual symptoms. That's because the cell is taken 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:14.000