IP: 91.204.14.226 On: Thu, 06 Dec 2018 20:38:41 Copyright: American Scientific Publishers Delivered by Ingenta RESEARCH ARTICLE Copyright © 2012 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Journal of Bionanoscience Vol. 6, 109–112, 2012 Physical Point of View for Antiviral Effect Caused by the Interaction Between the Viruses and Nanoparticles V. Lozovski 1 2 , V. Lysenko 1 , V. Piatnytsia 2 ∗ , O. Scherbakov 3 , N. Zholobak 3 , and M. Spivak 3 1 V. Lashkariov Institute of Semiconductor Physics NAS of Ukraine, Nauki Ave. 45, Kyiv, 03028, Ukraine 2 Institute of High Technologies, T. Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 64 Volodymyrska Str., Kyiv, 01601, Ukraine 3 D. Zabolontyi Institute of Mikrobiology and Virology, NAS of Ukraine, 154 Zabolotnyi Str., Kyiv, 13143, Ukraine The new mechanism of antiviral activity of nanoparticles based on the local-field interaction is proposed. Several ways of realization of the mechanism are discussed. The experimental results of antivirus therapy are presented for action of nanoparticles CeO 2 and Au on herpes simplex virus (HSV) and the influenza virus A/FM/1/47 (H1N1). It was shown that the both nanoparticle preparations have the strong antiviral activities. Keywords: Nanoparticles, Viruses, Local-Field Enhancement, Antiviral Activity. 1. INTRODUCTION A virus is a small “particle” which is infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. 1–2 Viruses infect all types of the organisms: bacteria, plants, animals and human. 3 Viruses are the reason of a number of human diseases, from simple chill to some kinds of cancer. 4 The struggle against the viruses became at this time of day the most important problem of the sciences from medicine to physics. The characteristic dimensions of the viruses are from 10 nm up to 500 nm. For example, the dimensions of the adenoviruses are about 70–90 nm, the dimension of AIDS virus is about 100 nm and dimensions of the herpes viruses are about 170 nm. It means that the viruses are the objects of nanophysics, specifically, near- field physics. 5–7 Because from the physical point of view, the viruses are the nanoparticles having the specific shape and characterized by the rather essential linear and non- linear polarizabilities, the interaction between the viruses and solid nanoparticles can have the all features inherent to the objects of near-field physics. For example, the virus- nanoparticle interaction can be resonant. Namely, the so- called configurational resonance 8 can be observed in the system. The resonance obviously can lead to anomalously effective absorption of the energy of external (relatively to ∗ Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. the system) field. This field can be either the field of the external radiation or the fluctuating field. From the other hand, the local-field enhancement 9–10 can be observed in the system “virus-nanoparticle” (see Fig. 1). The all these effects can take place when the virus and nanoparticle will be located closely from one to another. The idea of the antiviral therapy of the nanoparticles was discussed by authors in Ref. [11]. Moreover it would be in preference when the virus and nanoparticle can form the stable configuration. In this case the additional reason con- nected with the geometrical characteristics of the system strongly fall the infectious ability of the virus. In the previ- ous work of the authors Ref. [11] the possibility of arising of interaction potential between two nanoparticles, which have as linear as nonlinear polarizabilities, characterized as attractive as repulsive parts with rather deep minimum was discussed. It means that as it is shown in Figure 2, the stable configuration can be established in the system ‘virus-nanoparticle.’ Then, arising of the stable system ‘virus-nanoparticle’ can lead to the antiviral therapy effect at least by the sev- eral types of the mechanisms: It is clear that there is two definitely different mecha- nisms of the viral activity inhibition. The total result of the inhibition of the viral activity is consist of the two processes. J. Bionanosci. 2012, Vol. 6, No. 2 1557-7910/2012/6/109/004 doi:10.1166/jbns.2012.1084 109