In an age of masking, compulsive hand sanitizing and plexiglass dividers, it seems inconceivable that for more than 40 years people enthusiastically signed up — and were often put on a waiting list — to have respiratory viruses, including coronaviruses, dripped into their noses.
They were volunteers at the Common Cold Unit, set up in 1946 by the British government’s Medical Research Council. Housed in an abandoned American military field hospital in the English countryside, the Common Cold Unit’s mission was to find a cure for the common cold and by doing so, boost productivity as the battered nation tried to rebuild after World War II.
Every two weeks, 30 participants arrived on the Salisbury Plain, not far from Stonehenge, to enjoy the bucolic setting — perhaps do some painting or work on a novel — and gamble on getting sick. About a third did. But, according to participant accounts, that didn’t stop many of them from returning year after year, some for their honeymoons.
Open Orphan (LON:ORPH) was founded in 2017, with the goal of rapidly building Europe’s leading pharma services company by a management team with extensive industry and financial expertise. The company comprises of two commercial specialist CRO services businesses (Venn Life Sciences and hVIVO) and is also developing a genomics data platform business (Genomic Health Data).