Reducing the Infectivity of SarsCov2 on PPE gowns used in heaLthcare Environments (RIPPLE)

降低SARS冠状病毒对医疗保健环境中使用的个人防护用品礼服的传染性新冠肺炎疫情对每个人都产生了重大而深远的影响。虽然我们现在有了有效的疫苗，但一些人仍然容易感染冠状病毒，特别是它的变种。特别是，免疫系统功能不佳的人，或者在医院、卫生或社会护理环境中的非常年长和非常年轻的人仍然处于危险之中。我们可以降低感染风险的主要方法之一是穿上个人防护装备，如长袍和口罩。然而，当医护人员照顾新冠肺炎患者时，这些物品会被病毒污染。摘掉它们可能会导致病毒被抖落，污染环境，或者被其他人吸入。这可能会导致进一步的感染。我们的想法是制作专门粘连新冠肺炎病毒(SARS-CoV-2)的个人防护用品礼服。通过这样做，病毒将被保存在礼服上，以便在医疗垃圾箱中处理，而不是被释放到医疗环境中或吸入。通过减少可用于感染人类的病毒数量，我们希望这将降低那些特别容易感染的人感染新冠肺炎的风险。为了做到这一点，我们正在与工业合作伙伴合作创造小分子(配体)，这些小分子(配体)被设计成粘在病毒表面的一部分(刺激性糖蛋白)上。我们将创建大量的配体，并使用具有相同刺激性糖蛋白(慢病毒载体)的安全病毒来找出哪些结合得最好。当我们选择了最好的配基后，我们将看看哪些配基可以连接到PPE礼服所用的材料上。然后，我们将通过观察它们结合的长度和强度来确保它们仍然附着在慢病毒载体上。最后，我们将使用利兹大学的专门设施来观察新的粘性材料在活的SARS-CoV-2病毒上的表现，以确保它们在现实世界中工作得很好。我们的工业合作伙伴Astrea和NIRI在大规模制造配体和专业材料方面拥有丰富的经验，以便成功结合SARS-CoV2的配体-材料组合可以大量生产，并尽快到达卫生和社会保健部门的工作人员手中。

Reducing the Infectivity of SarsCov2 on PPE gowns used in heaLthcare Environments (RIPPLE)The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant and far-reaching effects for everyone. While we now have effective vaccines, some people are still vulnerable to the coronavirus and especially to its variants. In particular, people who have immune systems that do not function well, or the very elderly and very young in hospitals and health or social care settings are still at risk. One of the major ways we can reduce the risk of infection is by wearing personal protective equipment, such as gowns and masks. However, when healthcare staff are looking after a COVID-19 patient, these items become contaminated with virus. Taking them off can result in viruses being shaken off and contaminating the environment or being breathed in by other people. This could lead to further infections.Our idea is to make PPE gowns specifically sticky to the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2). By doing this, the virus will be held on the gowns for disposal in clinical waste bins, rather than being released into the healthcare environment or breathed in. By reducing the amount of virus available to infect people, we hope this will reduce the risk of COVID-19 for those who are particularly vulnerable to infection. To do this, we are working with industrial partners to create small molecules (ligands) that are designed to stick to a part of the virus surface (spike glycoprotein). We will create lots of ligands and use a safe virus with the same spike glycoprotein (lentivirus vector) to find out which ones stick the best. When we have chosen the best ligands to work with, we will see which ones can be attached to the materials used in PPE gowns. We will then make sure these still stick to the lentivirus vector by looking at how long and how strongly they bind. Finally, we will use the specialised facilities at the University of Leeds to see how the new sticky materials perform with live SARS-CoV-2 virus to make sure they will work well in the real world. Our industrial partners, Astrea and NIRI have a lot of experience with making ligands and specialised materials on large scales, so that the ligand-material combination that successfully binds SARS- CoV2 can be produced in large quantities and reach staff in the health and social care sectors as soon as possible.