Surface engineering of personal protective equipments (PPEs) to prevent the contagious infections of SARS-CoV-2

ABSTRACT

The outermost surfaces of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) interact with virus surface-protein as the first step during its transmission from aerosols and contacting surfaces, which can be tuned by surface engineering/modification. This report highlights the role of engineered surface chemistry of PPEs to avoid the spreading of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus in hospitals. Physical properties of surfaces and spike-glycoprotein are correlated with the reported stability of SARS-CoV-2. The spike-protein is reported to be hydrophobic in nature with an isoelectric point of 5.9. Hence surface with both positive charge and hydrophobic groups are expected to achieve a strong binding with the surface spike-protein. Various surface engineering strategies of polypropylene and other materials with hybrid self-assembled monolayers and dopamine are discussed to design the mixed hydrophobic and charged surfaces. The strong surface-protein interactions may lead to severe conformational changes and destabilization of the viral envelope, which can disintegrate and inactivate the novel coronavirus.

KEYWORDS:

• Coronavirus
• SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein
• surface modification
• polypropylene
• hybrid self-Assembled monolayers
• conformational changes
• PPEs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).