In the future it will be possible to use them for transporting drugs and for vaccination
Technion researchers and the Russell Berry Institute for Research in Nanotechnology, in collaboration with researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in California, succeeded in developing a method for the chemical synthesis of spherical molecular containers, while imitating the protein structure of most viruses known to us. This is reported this week by the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
Professor Ehud Keinan from the Shulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion explains: "The inspiration for this work came from observing the wonderful structure of spherical viruses. The way viruses build their spherical envelope is extremely economical and efficient, as it uses a minimal number of building blocks. The hollow ball of the virus is created by connecting 12 pentagonal tiles, in exactly the same way that a football is made from 12 pentagonal pieces of leather."
The article proves the feasibility of the idea through calculations and through the use of models. The researchers demonstrated this principle by building pentagonal bodies out of plastic material, on the edges of which small magnets were placed. When these models were shaken in a closed vessel, a complete sphere spontaneously formed. "We are now very close to finishing the chemical synthesis of the pentagonal building blocks, which will coalesce together and form the spherical containers. We expect that these containers will have the right size to be used as 'vehicles' to transport drugs to the desired destination in the body," explains Professor Keenan. "In addition to this, we intend to use these spheres as scaffolds for the construction of metallic nanospheres of uniform size, with a diameter of 3 nanometers, that is, 3 millionths of a millimeter. For comparison, the diameter of the polio virus is 30 nanometers. A particularly promising use of the molecular pills is the future possibility of using them to vaccinate against diseases, thereby eliminating the need and risk of vaccinating with weakened real viruses.
