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A group led by Donald A. Tomalia , scientific director of the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan Medical School, also has succeeded in inhibiting viral attachment by employing multivalency. "We make nanodecoys--fake biological cells consisting of dendrimers decorated with sialic acid groups," Tomalia says. "They literally act as decoys to attract viruses away from healthy cells. It's an artificial immunosystem." The idea, Tomalia says, "is to use these nanodecoys either as sprays in the mucous membrane or as a coating on an absorbent filter that one might have in a respiratory device. Viruses would stick to this like flypaper before they even got into the respiratory tract." Tomalia and coworkers believe nanodecoys can potentially be used to protect against bioterrorism or other cases of large-scale pathogen release. "We're encouraged by the in vitro results on this [Bioconjugate Chem., 10, 271 (1999)], and we're about to go into animal testing," Tomalia says. |
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