"The gold nanorods protect the RNA from degrading once inside cells, while allowing for more selected targeting of cells," said co-author Paul R. Knight III, MD, Chakravarthy's thesis advisor; professor of anesthesiology, microbiology and infectious diseases in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; and director of its MD/PhD program.

"This work demonstrates that the modulation of host response is going to be critical to the next generation of anti-viral therapies," Chakravarthy explains. "The novelty of this approach is that most of these kinds of RNA viruses share a common host-response immune pathway; that is what we have targeted with our nanoparticle therapy. By enhancing the host immune response, we avoid the difficulty of ongoing viral resistance generated through mutations."

Diseases that could be effectively targeted with this new approach include any viruses that are susceptible to the innate immune response that type 1 interferons trigger, Prasad notes.

Based on these in vitro results, the UB and CDC researchers are beginning animal studies.

"This collaboration has been extraordinary as two disparate research groups at UB and a third at the CDC have managed to maintain progress toward a common goal: treatment of influenza," says co-author Adela Bonoiu, PhD, UB research assistant professor at ILPB.

Source: University at Buffalo