Scientists have developed a new tool that mimics how the novel coronavirus which causes Covid-19 enters and infects cells, an advance that could potentially speed up the search for treatments against the deadly disease. The novel tool, described in the journal ACS Nano, is a fluorescent nanoparticle probe with the spike protein that is present on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which it uses to bind to human cells and enter them. According to the researchers, including those from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in the US, the probe could be used in tests to rapidly gauge the ability of therapeutics to block the actual virus from infecting human cells.
“Our goal is to create a screening system to find compounds that block SARS-CoV-2 from binding to cells and infecting them,” explained Kirill Gorshkov, a co-author of the study…