Revista de nanomateriales y nanotecnología molecular

Nanomedicine in Covid

Sharvari Desai

A new extreme acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (nCoV or SARS-CoV-2) emerged in December 2019 and quickly developed into a global pandemic, which was announced on March 2020. Though treatment options are still limited, medical and science experts have been working together to develop effective therapies that will reduce the pandemic's severity. Viruses are naturally occurring nanoparticles that run at the same metric scale as other nanomaterials. For years, the nanomedicine community has worked hard to mimic virus behaviour by creating viral-like nanoparticles that can be used for targeted therapy and gene delivery. It's not shocking, then, that nanotechnology techniques have proven to be extremely useful in the current pandemic, with applications ranging from viral neutralisation and identification to vaccine production and treatment. Using nanotechnology platforms, a new class of DNA and RNA based vaccines delivers the genetic sequence of unique viral proteins to host cells. Traditional vaccines, on the other hand, elicit immune responses by injecting whole viruses into the body, such as attenuated live viruses, inactivated viruses, or engineered viruses. In clinical trials, both forms of vaccines are being tested against COVID19 mRNA based treatments have a number of benefits over other methods. Since mRNA is not infectious and cannot be inserted into the host genome, it is a better option than whole virus or DNA transmission.