Nanotechnology to fight coronavirus

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Continuing with the saga of new technologies and their way of combating the coronavirus, today it is time to talk about how nanotechnology can also help against the coronavirus.

Suggested wikipedia: Nanotechnology includes the study, design, creation, synthesis, manipulation and application of materials, devices and functional systems through the control of matter at the nanoscale.

A nanometer is a billionth of a meter or what is the same, divide this letter "o" into a million parts and work with each one of them.

When we speak of these sizes we are referring to the manipulation of systems at the atomic level and organisms of a few atoms in size.

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In this scenario, the European project 'CoNVat', led by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) of Spain, will design a new Covid-19 diagnostic system, which gathers the best of the different existing techniques.

This technology consists of a 'microchip' with interferometric waveguides that allow the detection and quantification of molecules or viruses in a single step, so that the complete analysis can be performed in less than 30 minutes.

On the one hand, it will monitor the binding of the virus to the sensor in real time by means of specific antibodies anchored in the sensor surface, which will allow the quantification of the viral load to be determined from samples of saliva or any other fluid of interest.

On the other hand, it will identify the viral RNA by means of complementary DNA probes, this without the need for PCR amplification processes, which allows various simultaneous tests to be carried out on the same chip.

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The CoNVat project seeks to overcome some of the benefits of current tools by taking the best of each strategy and applying it in its new technology.

The report provides an overview of both conventional techniques used in clinical laboratories and new systems under development and commercialization that may be useful for monitoring and rapid detection of the coronavirus.

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https://icn2.cat/en/news/4466-the-icn2-leads-a-european-project-to-diagnose-the-covid-19-disease-in-30-minutes

Versión en español