General Defence

Some challenges call for a personal approach, while others are easily tackled with more generic tactics. Viral infection is a universal threat, and although the best defences are antivirals designed to tackle particular strains, this can take time and viruses can evolve at speed. Therefore it’s essential to have a suite of broad antivirals to keep rising threats at bay. Factors on the surface of viral envelopes [their outer wrapping] are a potential target for such drugs, but it‘s proven hard to pinpoint new elements to focus on. A new approach responds to the subtle change in acidity caused by viral infection, with pH-sensitive nanoprobes (yellow), which bind to viral surfaces (orange) only at certain pH levels. The result is the breakdown of the viral envelope, reducing the harm a range of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, can cause, and providing an approach that could provide a first line of defence against emerging viruses.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Yizhe Sun and colleagues
• School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Advanced Materials, February 2022