What motivated you, a specialist in materials science, to pursue medical research?

Francesco Stellacci: I want to conduct research that makes a difference in the world, both to people and the environment. I also believe it’s essential to find solutions for problems in poorer countries. And because health is at the heart of so many problems there, my focus has increasingly shifted to medical research. For example, I discovered additives that keep the temperature of vaccines stable for up to two months—without a refrigerator or other cooling methods. This can significantly lower the cost of vaccine programmes in developing countries, as up to 80 percent of all expenditures go towards keeping the vaccines cool enough. I intentionally didn’t have my discovery patented so that it can be used as widely as possible. 

And now your goal is to develop a broad-spectrum antiviral drug? 

Yes, it’s an absolute necessity. The problem with having drugs effective against only a single virus is that treatment becomes expensive and availability is limited. A broad-spectrum antiviral drug would be much more effective and would reduce costs in the healthcare sector, an essential factor for developing countries.

There’s hope that a vaccine against the novel coronavirus will be found before your drug is ready. Is it still worthwhile to focus on its efficacy in treating Covid-19?

I sincerely hope that we’ll have a Covid-19 vaccine very soon, but there’s no guarantee. In principle, it’s easier to find a drug to treat an entire class of diseases than it is to develop a vaccine for every single illness. And having a medication that’s effective in treating a wide range of viral infections can facilitate the development of a vaccine. 

How so?

A vaccine offers preventive protection, but a drug cures illness. To prove the efficacy of a vaccine, people undergoing trials have to be willing to risk falling seriously ill. If the vaccine fails and no effective medication is available, we’re endangering the lives of the test subjects. Vaccine trials are much less risky if an effective way to treat a virus already exists. But again, it’s all the better if we soon have a Covid-19 vaccine. Of course, it’s also not certain that it will work perfectly for everyone, so a drug would be helpful in all scenarios. This is all the more true if the drug is effective against the kind of virus that could cause a future pandemic or against viruses like the influenza virus. Regarding the latter, it would be fantastic to see a real improvement in flu treatments. 

You’re planning on making all your research findings openly accessible. What’s your reasoning behind this decision?

We want to motivate other research groups to seek even better methods of implementing the approach. Maybe someone will find a yet more elegant way to imitate our sugar molecules or to create pressure on the viral envelope. I want to show that the principle works. Then other researchers will be encouraged to apply the process, too. That’s how science works. And that’s exactly how it should be. 

If this project is successful, what will your next goal be?

One issue that has preoccupied and also saddened me for several years now is that many children die of infectious diarrhoea, especially in poorer countries. It’s estimated that there are up to half a million deaths every year. As one of my next projects, I’d like to try to find a therapy to treat these kinds of diseases. Then, aside from medicine, I’m also interested in ecological issues. I’d like to help develop a sustainable form of plastic that doesn’t harm the environment. There are so many challenges in the world—I’m very much motivated to tackle some of them with my research. 

Interview: Adrian Ritter
Photos: Felix Wey