"I was skeptical at the beginning because it seemed too good to be true," says NEIDL microbiologist Anna Honko, one of the co-first authors on the study. "But when I saw the first set of results in the lab, I was just astonished." The technology consists of very small, nanosized drops of polymers - essentially, soft biofriendly plastics - covered in fragments of living lung cell and immune cell membranes.
"It looks like a nanoparticle coated in pieces of cell membrane," Honko says. "The small polymer [droplet] mimics a cell having a membrane around it." In experiments at the NEIDL, BU researchers observed that polymer droplets laden with pieces of lung cell membrane did a better job of attracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus than living lung cells. By fusing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus better than living cells can, the nanotechnology appears to be an effective countermeasure to coronavirus infection, preventing SARS-CoV-2 from attacking cells.
"Our guess is that it acts like a decoy, it competes with cells for the virus," says NEIDL microbiologist Anthony Griffiths, co-corresponding author on the study. "They are little bits of plastic, just containing the outer pieces of cells with none of the internal cellular machinery contained inside living cells. Conceptually, it is such a simple idea. It mops up the virus like a sponge."
That attribute is why the UC San Diego and BU research team call the technology "nanosponges." Once SARS-CoV-2 binds with the cell fragments inside a nanosponge droplet - each one a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair - the coronavirus dies. Although the initial results are based on experiments conducted in cell culture dishes, the researchers believe that inside a human body, the biodegradable nanosponges and the SARS-CoV-2 virus trapped inside them could then be disposed of by the body's immune system. The immune system routinely breaks down and gets rid of dead cell fragments caused by infection or normal cell life cycles.
There is also another important effect that the nanosponges have in the context of coronavirus infection. Honko says nanosponges containing fragments of immune cells can soak up cellular signals that increase inflammation. Acute respiratory distress, caused by an inflammatory cascade inside the lungs, is the most deadly aspect of the coronavirus infection, sending patients into the intensive care unit for oxygen or ventilator support to help them breathe.
But the nanosponges, which can attract the inflammatory molecules that send the immune system into dangerous overdrive, can help tamp down that response, Honko says. By using both kinds of nanosponges, some containing lung cell fragments and some containing pieces of immune cells, she says it's possible to "attack the coronavirus and the [body's] response" responsible for disease and eventual lung failure.
MEDICA-tradefair.com; Source: Boston University
