More the latter I believe.
Again, I am not a medical researcher and out of my league on the details, but what I gleaned is that while the nano micelles show a promising future, as with all compounds placed in the physiological system, there are safety concerns.
I think the paper suggests the most logical concerns are uptake in parts of the immune system, as with monocytes and macrophages accumulation in lymph nodes and the spleen (I am surmising here). Also some concerns over the degree of allergic reactions and/or inflammatory responses, particularly with continuous exposure or long-term use.
Other papers suggest that toxicities exhibited during in-vitro testing are not typically appearing or obvious in in-vivo and suggest the body can tolerate the compounds in general. The gist I got was that if no or low apparent toxicities are initially seen, due diligence would dictate investigation the effect of multiple or prolonged dosages to look for accumulation and/or other physiological responses as indicated above. Sounds like pure common sense to me.
The take-away for me is that the duration of a highly complete and thorough toxicity investigation could have a need to be expanded, even if good news is shown initially.
However, it also appears that some of the extended dosing concerns might be more associated with anti-cancer therapeutic drug deliveries that many need to occur in many courses distributed over many years. Viral infections are more temporally acute issues.
As a side note, the attachment of the target ligands as discussed in the CRC publication also appear self-assembling such that they can produce a base carrier nanomicelle material that has extended shelf-life, where upon a new virus could be quickly engaged by simply adding the desired target ligand to existing batches of ‘blank’ nanovircides waiting on the shelves to be essentially programmed.
That would be wonderful and again, it means that Nanoviricides may actually be the most effective anti-pandemic defense system the world has seen under development to date.
The more I investigate this potential life saving technology, the more I am impressed.
Have a great day!
HS
