Researchers at Rice University find that charcoal, and other materials described in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Nano Materials, could aid treatment COVID-19 patients.
In the project co-led by Rice chemist James Tour, researchers found oxidized charcoal nanoparticles are not only effective antioxidants, but can also be made from an activated carbon source that is inexpensive, good manufacturing practice (GMP) certified, and already being used in humans to treat acute poisoning.
“That these nanozymes are made from a GMP source opens the door for drug manufacturers,” said Tour, who led the project with A&M neurologist Thomas Kent and UTHealth biochemist Ah-Lim Tsai. “While coal was effective, an issue is that it can have a variety of toxic metallic elements and impurities that are not consistent across samples. And the clusters made from carbon nanotubes are very expensive.”
The researchers noted it may be worthwhile to study the application of their nanozymes to treat the cytokine storms – an excessive immune system response to infection – suspected of contributing to tissue and organ damage in COVID-19 patients.
“While speculative that these particles will be helpful in COVID-19, if administration is timed correctly, they could reduce the damaging radicals that accompany the cytokine storm and could be further chemically modified to reduce other injury-causing features of this disease,” Kent said.
Gang Wu, an assistant professor of hematology at McGovern, and Rice graduate student Emily McHugh are co-lead authors of the study. Co-authors are Vladimir Berka, a senior research scientist at McGovern; Rice graduate students Weiyin Chen, Zhe Wang and Jacob Beckham; Rice undergraduate Trenton Roy; and Paul Derry, an assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology.
Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. Kent is the Robert A. Welch Chair Professor in the Institute of Biosciences and Technology at Texas A&M-Houston Campus and an adjunct chemistry professor at Rice and at Houston Methodist Hospital. Tsai is a professor of hematology at UTHealth. Click here to read all of the findings of the Rice University researchers’ work.
