UK-RI funding awarded

UK-Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded Covid-19 funding to Professors Morgan Alexander, Jonathan Ball, Cameron Alexander and Dr Christopher Coleman for research into:  How simple plastic surfaces can be recruited to the fight against contact transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that is responsible for the current Covid-19 pandemic appears to spread easily via surfaces. Early work indicates that viruses appear to remain infectious longer on some surfaces compared to others. The aims of this project are to identify the effect on the virus adsorption, infectivity and denaturation behaviours of; 1) a range of commercially available gloves and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) surfaces, e.g. visors, to enable a recommendation of which existing polymers should be employed for optimal PPE, and 2) screen novel polymer surfaces using high throughput methodologies for selection of virucidal performance recently developed at the University of Nottingham, to develop new polymers for PPE and contact transmission control.

Research objectives of the project:

1. Quantify viral binding and inactivation under ambient conditions to existing PPE plastics.
2. Quantify the magnitude and specificity of SARS-CoV-2 virus-like particle (VLP) or SARS2 spike-containing pseudovirus (PV) binding to polymers using libraries presented on micro arrays.
3. Quantify the adsorption, infectivity and denaturation of SARS-CoV-2 viruses bound to polymers of interest.
4. Develop anti-SARS-CoV-2 polymers for PPE and more widely for infection protection control surfaces.

Details of all UK-RI Covid-19 funded projects can be found here.