Nanotechnology: A Potential Weapon to Fight against COVID‐19

Abstract

the phylogenetic and taxonomical finding on February 11, the coronavirus (COV) study group (CGS) of the International Committee on Virus Taxonomy (ICTV) designated the virus as SARS-CoV-2. [1] The same day, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 "coronavirus disease 2019" (COVID-19). The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic On March 11, 2020. Globally as of June 2021, 179 686 071 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 3 899 172 deaths, reported by WHO. [2] Reducing the burden of COVID-19 infection by developing vaccines and antiviral drugs is still a big challenge for researchers and clinicians.Nowadays, nanotechnology is a promising player in the scientific and medical fields with many applications. [3,4] A new dimension has been opened by the functionally tunable nanosized materials for industrial, biomedical, and scientific purposes, which provides a set of techniques that allow the manipulation of structural and functional properties on a microscale. [5,6] Nanotechnology is kindred with the biomedicinal involvement of nanoparticles (NPs), which are not only used as the backbone in the vaccine to formulate "nanovaccines," nanomaterial-based antiviral agents, disinfectants; which inhibit the multiplication within the host or inactivate them outside the host, but also the application of designed nanorobots to detect and repairs of tissue defects at the cellular level. [7,8] Unlike the conventional drug formulations, which typically circulate throughout the entire body parts, nanoparticles may target a desired part of the body as a targeted drug delivery vehicle. Compared to conventional vaccines, nanovaccines or surface-functionalized nanoparticles can be designed, explicitly targeting lymphatic organs and immune cells to provoke better immune responses. Moreover, the localized infections are challenging to be treated by the conventional vaccines but can be treated by the nanovaccines with specific cells or organ-targeting molecules. In some cases, the nanobased settings are applied to enhance the solubility of hydrophobic compounds. These systems are helpful to protect the antigens from degradation and stabilize a large number of therapeutic biomolecules, such as peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids on the substrate. [9] Viral infections, particularly COVID-19, have posed a severe threat to public health globally because of their wide-sphered distribution and their potent ability to change the genetic makeup. [10] Unfortunately, viruses have adopted various alternative tacticsThe COVID-19 infections have posed an unprecedented global health emergency, with nearly three million deaths to date, and have caused substantial economic loss globally. Hence, an urgent exploration of effective and safe diagnostic/therapeutic approaches for minimizing the threat of this highly pathogenic coronavirus infection is needed. As an alternative to conventional diagnosis and antiviral agents, nanomaterials have a great potential to cope with the current or even futu...

Size and Zeta Potential Clicked Germination Attenuation and Anti-Sporangiospores Activity of PEI-Functionalized Silver Nanoparticles against COVID-19 Associated Mucorales (Rhizopus arrhizus)

“…Our previous study reported that PEI functionalized silver nanoparticles as a function of their molecular weight interacted with the surface-expressed proteins of Acinetobacter bauminnii and quenched their autofluorescence [17,37]. However, in our present study, the anti-sporangiospore mechanism on R. arrhizus indicates a different pathway.…”

Identification of microplastic fibres released from COVID-19 test swabs with Raman imaging

“…1 b, c) or in the middle part of fibre (d–f). (c) suggests that there might be a coating layer on the fibre surface, which might be functioned for the COVID-19 sampling [ 26 , 27 ]. That is, the layer containing particles is either formulated to realise the sampling or medical function or added as additive in the fabrication process.…”

Advances in Biosensing Technologies for Diagnosis of COVID-19

“…Nanomaterial-integrated bioreceptors facilitate the interaction of analytes due to their nanosized nature and high surface-to-volume ratio. The unique physicochemical, optical, mechanical, and magnetic properties of the nanomaterials enable the development of COVID-19 virus detection with improved performances [ 93 ]. There are several biosensors developed for the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 for the point-of-care application [ 94 , 95 ].…”