{"id":106769,"date":"2020-05-08T11:02:55","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T18:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/heres-how-nanoparticles-could-help-us-get-closer-to-a-treatment-for-covid-19"},"modified":"2020-05-08T11:02:55","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T18:02:55","slug":"heres-how-nanoparticles-could-help-us-get-closer-to-a-treatment-for-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/heres-how-nanoparticles-could-help-us-get-closer-to-a-treatment-for-covid-19","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s how nanoparticles could help us get closer to a treatment for COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/heres-how-nanoparticles-could-help-us-get-closer-to-a-treatment-for-covid-192.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There is no vaccine or specific treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.<\/p>\n<p>Since the outbreak began in late 2019, researchers have been racing to learn more about SARS-CoV-2, which is a strain from a family of viruses known as coronavirus for their crown-like shape.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Northeastern chemical engineering professor <a href=\"https:\/\/coe.northeastern.edu\/people\/webster-thomas\/\"><b>Thomas Webster<\/b><\/a>, who specializes in developing nano-scale medicine and technology to treat diseases, is part of a contingency of scientists that are contributing ideas and technology to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight the COVID-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/news.northeastern.edu\/2019\/01\/08\/to-fix-big-problems-in-medicine-hes-thinking-smaller\/\"><b>idea<\/b><\/a> of using nanoparticles, Webster says, is that the virus behind COVID-19 consists of a structure of a similar scale as his nanoparticles. At that scale, matter is ultra-small, about ten thousand times smaller than the width of a single strand of hair.<\/p>\n<p>Webster is proposing particles of similar sizes that could attach to SARS-CoV-2 viruses, disrupting their structure with a combination of infrared light treatment. That structural change would then halt the ability of the virus to survive and reproduce in the body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is no vaccine or specific treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. Since the outbreak began in late 2019, researchers have been racing to learn more about SARS-CoV-2, which is a strain from a family of viruses known as coronavirus for their crown-like shape. Northeastern [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}