Health
Can a microscopic “sponge” lure a coronavirus into a trap?
Liangfang Zhang, conversation
Researchers around the world are working hard to develop a COVID-19 vaccine aimed at targeting and attacking the SARS-CoV-2 virus. My researcher Nano Engineering Laboratory We are taking another approach towards halting SARS-CoV-2. Instead of attacking and stimulating the immune system to attack the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it provides protection. We are working to protect the healthy human cells that the virus invades.
Conceptually, the strategy is simple. Create a decoy that looks like human cells invaded by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So far, we have created lung cell decoys and immune cell decoys. These cell decoys attract and neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 virus, keeping your real lungs or immune cells healthy.
To make a decoy, we collect the outer membranes of lungs or immune cells and wrap them around a core made of biodegradable nanoparticles. From the outside, decoys look like the human cells they are disguising. Our decoys are hundreds of times smaller in diameter than real lungs and immune cells, but have the same cellular hardware protruding.
They call them “nano sponges” because they absorb harmful pathogens and toxins that attack the cells they disguise. My team and I first developed this concept 10 years ago and have since shown that nanosponges provide a new approach to combat viral infections like HIV. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or bacterial infections such as MRSA, E. coli, sepsis; inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Recently Published results We have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus binds to these decoy nanosponges. These sponges were over 90% effective in losing the ability of the virus to infect cells in Petri dishes. When the virus is trapped in the decoy, it cannot enter the actual cells and is cleared by the body’s immune system.
Vaccines are important to protect against viral infections, but viruses mutate and can render vaccines or treatments ineffective. This is why new influenza vaccines are being developed each year. Fortunately, SARS-CoV-2 does not appear to mutate as quickly as the influenza virus, highlighting the need for alternatives that are immune to mutations.
We hope other research teams will come up with a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19 as soon as possible. But for now, my team is working and planning as if the world were counting on us.
The different types of nanosponges we have developed are in different stages of preclinical development. So far, the results look promising, but there is still work that needs to be done to ensure they are safe and effective.
Cellular nanosponges are a new class of drugs. We created the first nanosponges using human red blood cell membranes. These are the furthest part of the regulatory process, going through all stages of preclinical testing.
Cellics TherapeuticsIs a start-up company I co-founded and is submitting a new drug application to the FDA for red blood cell nanosponges to treat bacterial pneumonia. If these red blood cell nanosponges get FDA approval and the pre-clinical data of COVID-19 nanosponges look good, COVID-19 nanosponges will make the way to clinical trials clearer in the coming years. I can.
We are currently testing SARS-CoV-2 nanosponges in animals. When nanosponges have reached the stage of clinical trials, some methods of delivering therapeutics, such as delivering them directly to the lungs to intubated patients via inhalers or intravenous injections as used by asthmatics there is.
It is also possible that our immune cell nanosponges absorb inflammatory cytokine proteins that cause a dangerous immune system hyperreactivity in some people who suffer from COVID-19.
Liangfang Zhang is a Professor of Nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego.
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