Use Of Nanotechnology To Combat Pandemics And Infectious Diseases

Combat Pandemics, Technology-based solutions could support the development of safer mask or air filter devices, by working to immobilise and kill the virus.

Use Of Nanotechnology To Combat Pandemics And Infectious Diseases

In addition, nanotechnology could support the development of self-disinfecting surfaces which avoid contamination and therefore minimise the spread of a virus.

Combat Pandemics, Some of the key Nanomaterials that could help in the fight against future pandemics are the emerging nanoflowers of WSe2, WS2, MoSe2, and MoS2. The study suggests that the stability of these materials in air, their availability as free-standing nanomaterials and their strong substrate anchoring means they could be used in aerosols, on surfaces or for face masks to detect or kill a virus.

Therapeutic methods

The use of nanotechnology to target COVID-19 could also be explored, through enabling the design of tools to deliver drugs and to control the immune response.

The emerging nanoflowers mentioned above have also been suggested to have a high surface area and edge reactivity. This enables them to be used in nano-medicine, to potentially kill virus pathogens, deliver molecules, and to interfere with the cellular functioning of a virus.

Diagnostics

Combat Pandemics, Diagnostics are also an important part of keeping a virus under control. Nanotechnology could be applied to new simple, fast, and cost-effective nanotechnology-based systems to monitor the presence of viruses and related biomarkers.

The study has suggested that the most popular testing platforms are smartphone apps. It highlights how nanopaper and nanochannels could offer a cost-effective alternative diagnostic in comparison to smartphone testing.

Toward Nanotechnology-Enabled Approaches against the COVID-19 Pandemic by Carsten Weiss*, Marie Carriere*, Laura Fusco, Ilaria Capua, Jose Angel Regla-Nava, Matteo Pasquali, James A. Scott, Flavia Vitale, Mehmet Altay Unal, Cecilia Mattevi, Davide Bedognetti, Arben Merkoçi, Ennio Tasciotti, Açelya Yilmazer, Yury Gogotsi, Francesco Stellacci, and Lucia Gemma Delogu* published 10 June in ACS Publications

This news was originally published at imperial.ac.uk