Amazing stuff! I bet it applies not only to coronavirus!
"... One promising approach relies on the use of nanoparticles, with several metal and metal oxide nanoparticles showing anti-viral activity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. With this in mind, researchers ... investigated the effect of such nanoparticles on two different virus types.
Aiming to elucidate the nanoparticles’ mode of action, they discovered a previously unknown antiviral mechanism ..."
"... It should also be easy to design cost-effective filters to purify contaminated air and water,” ...
Now, researchers ... have studied the outcome when certain types of mineral nanoparticles come into contact with a coronavirus, and they discovered a mode of action that has not been proposed before. ...
Coronaviruses belong to a type of virus that has an outer envelope, a lipid membrane. It turned out that nanoparticles of sand minerals such as titanium oxide bind very strongly to phospholipids in this membrane. This damages the membrane and leads to the release of viral genetic material, thereby making the virus less able to infect cells. ..."
From the abstract:
"The recent COVID-19 pandemic has set a strong quest for advanced understanding of possible tracks in abating and eliminating viral infections. In the view that several families of “pristine” small oxide nanoparticles (NPs) have demonstrated viricidal activity against SARS-CoV-2, we studied the effect of two NPs, with presumably different reactivity, on two viruses aiming to evaluate two “primary suspect” routes of their antiviral activity, either specific blocking of surface proteins or causing membrane disruption.
The chosen NPs were non-photoactive 3.5 nm triethanolamine terminated (surface capped) titania TiO2 NPs (TATT) and ultrasmall (1.1 nm) silicotungstate polyoxometalate (POM) NPs. The former were expected to both, interact with viral surface proteins as well as strongly complex with phosphate groups whereas the latter was not expected to form surface complexes.
We demonstrated that expectedly, POM NPs up to 1.25 mM (4.5 mg l−1) had no significant antiviral activity towards neither of the used viruses, an enveloped transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) belonging to coronaviruses and non-enveloped encelomyocarditis virus (EMCV).
At the same time, TATT NPs exhibited statistically significant (p < 0.05) antiviral activity against TGEV starting from 0.125 mM (12 μg ml−1). However, no antiviral activity of TATT against non-enveloped EMCV was detected. The observation that TATT NPs showed activity only against enveloped viruses and at relatively high concentrations suggests that the effect could be related with complexation with phospholipids. Possible chemical mechanism of viral membrane disruption was investigated by a variable temperature NMR study of NP complexation with model organic phosphate molecules, proving TATT to strongly interact with them and POM remain unreacted. Viral membrane disruption by TATT NPs was additionally confirmed by demonstrating RNA leakage from TGEV upon contact with those NPs. Therefore, our study proved a new mechanism of antiviral action of titania NPs in the dark which involved membrane disruption proceeding via direct surface complexation."
Nanoparticles damage coronavirus in an unexpected way, paving the way for new disinfection technology (original news release) "A new way to neutralise the coronavirus and other membrane-surrounded viruses has been discovered by researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the University of Tartu. Certain mineral nanoparticles were found to damage the membrane of the virus, making it less able to enter human cells. The mode of action that is demonstrated has not been discussed in previous research. The technology works at room temperature and also in the dark, offering a range of benefits for disinfecting surfaces, air and water."
Fig. 8 Proposed schematics of the interaction between enveloped virus and TATT TiO2/TATT/TATT titanate nanoparticles (grey color indicates phospholipids, yellow and brown indicate different kinds of membrane proteins).
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