Pharmacological inhibition of TBK1/IKKε blunts immunopathology in a murine model of SARS-CoV-2 infection

TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) is a key signalling component in the production of type-I interferons, which have essential antiviral activities, including against SARS-CoV-2. TBK1, and its homologue IκB kinase-ε (IKKε), can also induce pro-inflammatory responses that contribute to pathogen clearance. While initially protective, sustained engagement of type-I interferons is associated with damaging hyper-inflammation found in severe COVID-19 patients. The contribution of TBK1/IKKε signalling to these responses is unknown. Here we find that the small molecule idronoxil inhibits TBK1/IKKε signalling through destabilisation of TBK1/IKKε protein complexes. Treatment with idronoxil, or the small molecule inhibitor MRT67307, suppresses TBK1/IKKε signalling and attenuates cellular and molecular lung inflammation in SARS-CoV-2-challenged mice. Our findings additionally demonstrate that engagement of STING is not the major driver of these inflammatory responses and establish a critical role for TBK1/IKKε signalling in SARS-CoV-2 hyper-inflammation.

An update on vaccine status and the role of nanomedicine against SARS-CoV-2: A narrative review

Background and Aims

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus, is a highly communicable disease that gave rise to the ongoing pandemic. Despite prompt action across many laboratories in many countries, effective management of this disease is still out of reach. The focus of this review is to describe various vaccination approaches and nanomedicine-based delivery systems against COVID-19.

Methods

The articles included in this study were searched and added from different electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, Embase, and preprint databases.

Results

Mass immunization with vaccines is currently at the forefront of COVID-19 infection control. Such vaccines are live attenuated vaccines, inactivated vaccines, nucleic acid-based vaccines, protein subunit vaccines, viral-vector vaccines, and virus-like particle platforms. However, many promising avenues are currently being explored in laboratory and clinical settings, including treatment options, prevention, diagnosis, and management of the disease. Soft nanoparticles like lipid nanoparticles (solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNPs), liposomes, nanostructured lipid carriers, nanoemulsions, and protein nanoparticles play an essential role in nanomedicine. Because of their unique and excellent properties, nanomedicines have potential applications in treating COVID-19 disease.

Conclusions

This review work provides an overview of the therapeutic aspects of COVID-19, including vaccination and the role of nanomedicines in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19.

Volumetric Scalability of Microfluidic and Semi-Batch Silk Nanoprecipitation Methods

Silk fibroin nanoprecipitation by organic desolvation in semi-batch and microfluidic formats provides promising bottom-up routes for manufacturing narrow polydispersity, spherical silk nanoparticles. The translation of silk nanoparticle production to pilot, clinical, and industrial scales can be aided through insight into the property drifts incited by nanoprecipitation scale-up and the identification of critical process parameters to maintain throughout scaling. Here, we report the reproducibility of silk nanoprecipitation on volumetric scale-up in low-shear, semi-batch systems and estimate the reproducibility of chip parallelization for volumetric scale-up in a high shear, staggered herringbone micromixer. We showed that silk precursor feeds processed in an unstirred semi-batch system (mixing time > 120 s) displayed significant changes in the nanoparticle physicochemical and crystalline properties following a 12-fold increase in volumetric scale between 1.8 and 21.9 mL while the physicochemical properties stayed constant following a further 6-fold increase in scale to 138 mL. The nanoparticle physicochemical properties showed greater reproducibility after a 6-fold volumetric scale-up when using lower mixing times of greater similarity (8.4 s and 29.4 s) with active stirring at 400 rpm, indicating that the bulk mixing time and average shear rate should be maintained during volumetric scale-up. Conversely, microfluidic manufacture showed high between-batch repeatability and between-chip reproducibility across four participants and microfluidic chips, thereby strengthening chip parallelization as a production strategy for silk nanoparticles at pilot, clinical, and industrial scales.

Mixing and flow-induced nanoprecipitation for morphology control of silk fibroin self-assembly

Tuning silk fibroin nanoparticle morphology using nanoprecipitation for bottom-up manufacture is an unexplored field that has the potential to improve particle performance characteristics. The aim of this work was to use both semi-batch bulk mixing and micro-mixing to modulate silk nanoparticle morphology by controlling the supersaturation and shear rate during nanoprecipitation. At flow rates where the shear rate was below the critical shear rate for silk, increasing the concentration of silk in both bulk and micro-mixing processes resulted in particle populations of increased sphericity, lower size, and lower polydispersity index. At high flow rates, where the critical shear rate was exceeded, the increased supersaturation with increasing concentration was counteracted by increased rates of shear-induced assembly. The morphology could be tuned from rod-like to spherical assemblies by increasing supersaturation of the high-shear micro-mixing process, thereby supporting a role for fast mixing in the production of narrow-polydispersity silk nanoparticles. This work provides new insight into the effects of shear during nanoprecipitation and provides a framework for scalable manufacture of spherical and rod-like silk nanoparticles.

Tuning silk fibroin nanoparticle morphology using nanoprecipitation for bottom-up manufacture is an unexplored field that has the potential to improve particle performance characteristics.

Correction: Mixing and flow-induced nanoprecipitation for morphology control of silk fibroin self-assembly

Correction for ‘Mixing and flow-induced nanoprecipitation for morphology control of silk fibroin self-assembly’ by Saphia A. L. Matthew et al., RSC Adv., 2022, 12, 7357–7373. https://doi.org/10.2039/D1RA07764C.

Design of epidermal growth factor immobilization on 3D biocompatible scaffolds to promote tissue repair and regeneration

Exogenous application of human epidermal growth factor (hEGF) stimulates epidermal wound healing. The aim of this study was to develop bioconjugates based on hEGF mimicking the protein in its native state and thus suitable for tissue engineering applications, in particular for treating skin-related disorders as burns. Ribonuclease A (RNase A) was used to investigate a number of different activated-agarose carriers: cyanogen bromide (CNBr)-activated-agarose and glyoxyl-agarose showed to preserve the appropriate orientation of the protein for receptor binding. EGF was immobilized on these carriers and immobilization yield was evaluated (100% and 12%, respectively). A peptide mapping of unbound protein regions was carried out by LC-MS to take evidence of the residues involved in the immobilization and, consequently, the flexibility and surface accessibility of immobilized EGF. To assess cell proliferative activities, 10, 25, 50, and 100 ng/mL of each immobilized EGF sample were seeded on fibroblast cells and incubated for 24, 48 and 72 h. The immobilized growth factor showed significantly high cell proliferative activity at 50 and 100 ng/mL compared to control and soluble EGF. Although both of the immobilized samples show dose-dependency when seeded with high number of fibroblast cells, CNBr-agarose-EGF showed a significantly high activity at 100 ng/mL and 72 h incubation, compared to glyoxyl-agarose-EGF.