A Roadmap for Building Waterborne Virus Traps

Abstract

Outbreaks of waterborne viruses pose a massive threat to human health, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year. Adsorption-based filtration offers a promising facile and environmentally friendly approach to help provide safe drinking water to a world population of almost 8 billion people, particularly in communities that lack the infrastructure for largescale facilities. The search for a material that can effectively trap viruses has been mainly driven by a top-down approach, in which old and new materials have been tested for this purpose. Despite substantial advances, finding a material that achieves this crucial goal and meets all associated challenges remains elusive. We suggest that the road forward should strongly rely on a complementary bottomup approach based on our fundamental understanding of virus interactions at interfaces. We review the state-of-the-art physicochemical knowledge of the forces that drive the adsorption of viruses at solid−water interfaces. Compared to other nanometric colloids, viruses have heterogeneous surface chemistry and diverse morphologies. We advocate that advancing our understanding of virus interactions would require describing their physicochemical properties using novel descriptors that reflect their heterogeneity and diversity. Several other related topics are also addressed, including the effect of coadsorbates on virus adsorption, virus inactivation at interfaces, and experimental considerations to ensure well-grounded research results. We finally conclude with selected examples of materials that made notable advances in the field.

Surface Cross-Linking by Macromolecular Tethers Enhances Virus-like Particles’ Resilience to Mucosal Stress Factors

“…VLPs have similar physical characteristics to their viruses of origin, including size, proteinaceous core–shell structure, and patchy surface charge distribution, and like viruses are prone to aggregation, disintegration, and sticking to surfaces rendering them nonfunctional. 68 Enhancing the stability and survival of VLPs is therefore justified in future developments of VLP nanobiotechnology, particularly for mucosal applications. We investigated surface cross-linking as a means to achieve the latter.…”

Surface crosslinking of virus-like particles increases resistance to proteases, low pH, and mechanical stress for mucosal applications

“…VLPs have similar physical characteristics to their viruses of origin, including size, proteinaceous core-shell structure, and patchy surface charge distribution, and like viruses are prone to aggregation, disintegration, and sticking to surfaces rendering them non-functional ( 64 ). Enhancing the stability of VLPs is therefore justified in future developments of VLP biotechnology, particularly for mucosal applications.…”

“…Therefore, as viruses are effective only in their natural environments, it is expected that different VLPs are also effective in certain, but not all, environments. In fact, all VLPs are prone to aggregation, disintegration, and surface adsorption and sticking, which render them non-functional (78).…”

Study of Oncolytic Virus Preservation and Formulation

“…Furthermore, as the viral charge increases, the exposure of viral hydrophobic proteins decreases. The increased ionic strength shields the double layer and thus the electrostatic force, leading to the attachment of viruses to the surface through interactions (e.g., hydrophobic effects) [ 39 ]. Therefore, selecting a suitable pH and mitigating ionic strength can reduce the surface adsorption of viruses.…”