Nasal Defence

Catching a cold can, for some people, cause almost no symptoms, yet in others, cause severe respiratory illness. To investigate how such different outcomes arise, scientists have studied infection responses in human nasal epithelial organoids (pictured) – an array of cell types derived from nasal stem cells, that include mucus-producing cells and those possessing cilia (blue). Using rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of colds, the researchers found that when the organoids had a robust and immediate production of the cytokine interferon they effectively limited the replication and spread of the virus. By contrast, impaired interferon production, or a high viral load, prompted the cells to produce different pro-inflammatory cytokines and large amounts of mucus. The work shows how the host’s response to the virus rather than the virus itself can influence disease progression, and points to possible pathways and cytokines that could be targeted to support a healthy antiviral response.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by Julien Amat & Bao Wang, relating to work by Bao Wang and colleagues
• Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Cell Press Blue, January 2026