Thinking Small for Pandemic Solutions: A Nanomedicine Platform for Diagnosing and Treating Viral Infections

At the time of writing this, the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on the world. Far too many times, the world is caught off-guard by a new virus without having accurate testing to determine who is infected and certainly without appropriate vaccines or other therapies to treat such viral infections. COVID-19 is just another example in a long list of recent viruses which includes Ebola, H1N1, etc. This presentation presents a paradigm shift in viral diagnostics and therapies moving our healthcare system from treating each virus as a separate microbe to treating them as a platform. Specifically, we introduce nanomedicine, or the use of nanomaterials, as a versatile platform that can be functionalized to attach to several active regions on a virus simultaneously (thus being able to deal more readily with virus mutations) and more effectively than today’s single antibody or aptamer strategies. It will include results on novel nanoparticles, self-assembled materials, and viral theranostics that should be the focus of future medicine to avoid our constant “being caught off guard” healthcare system.