Search for: All records

The outbreak of 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID‐19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2), has resulted in a global pandemic. Despite intensive research, the current treatment options show limited curative efficacies. Here the authors report a strategy incorporating neutralizing antibodies conjugated to the surface of a photothermal nanoparticle (NP) to capture and inactivate SARS‐CoV‐2. The NP is comprised of a semiconducting polymer core and a biocompatible polyethylene glycol surface decorated with high‐affinity neutralizing antibodies. The multifunctional NP efficiently captures SARS‐CoV‐2 pseudovirions and completely blocks viral infection to host cells in vitro through the surface neutralizing antibodies. In addition to virus capture and blocking function, the NP also possesses photothermal function to generate heat following irradiation for inactivation of virus. Importantly, the NPs described herein significantly outperform neutralizing antibodies at treating authentic SARS‐CoV‐2 infection in vivo. This multifunctional NP provides a flexible platform that can be readily adapted to other SARS‐CoV‐2 antibodies and extended to novel therapeutic proteins, thus it is expected to provide a broad range of protection against original SARS‐CoV‐2 and its variants.

 

SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 are RNA viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide. Understanding the similarities and differences between these two infections is critical for understanding disease progression and for developing effective vaccines and therapies, particularly for 38 million HIV-1+ individuals who are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 co-infection. Here, we utilized single-cell transcriptomics to perform a systematic comparison of 94,442 PBMCs from 7 COVID-19 and 9 HIV-1+ patients in an integrated immune atlas, in which 27 different cell types were identified using an accurate consensus single-cell annotation method. While immune cells in both cohorts show shared inflammation and disrupted mitochondrial function, COVID-19 patients exhibit stronger humoral immunity, broader IFN-I signaling, elevated Rho GTPase and mTOR pathway activities, and downregulated mitophagy. Our results elucidate transcriptional signatures associated with COVID-19 and HIV-1 that may reveal insights into fundamental disease biology and potential therapeutic targets to treat these viral infections.