| Popis: |
Nanotechnology and nanomedicine have been shown to provide a novel and safe platform to combat a variety of viruses like SARS-CoV-2. Secondary metabolites implanted into a carrier of functionalized titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles (SMNP) were tested for efficacy versus SARS-CoV-2 infectivity, and cytotoxicity on healthy cells. Viral load; from a clinical point of view, it is not as important as the number of infective viral particles, which relates to the viral particles capable of causing the disease. To measure viral infectivity SARS-CoV-2 was placed into cell cultures and evaluating the destructive effect on cultured cells. In this system, SMNP demonstrated significant reduction of viral infectivity in vitro. Lytic plaques of viral infectivity were observed at a dilution of 4x10-8 in VERO E6 cells, while SARS-CoV-2 preincubated with the SMNP compound, tissue damage was observed only up to the 3x10-5 dilution. SMNP reduced the number of infective viral particles by 3 orders of magnitude. Surprising minimal toxicity to healthy cells was observed when compared to other commercially available antiseptics (glutaraldehyde, chlorine, chlorhexidine, ethanol and Lysol™), cell viability decreased only by 5.5%. SMNP is a safe and effective antiviral against SARS-CoV-2, and further studies are warranted to explore this compound further. |
