Plant Extracts Based Nanoparticles, Potential Nanomedicine in FightAgainst COVID-19

Abstract

There is no declared vaccine or specific medication/medications to date, to fight COVID-19, even though the first vaccine is expected to be out before December, 2020. However, plant based nanoparticles, may be one of the medical route that scientists can pursue to eradicate this planet threatening virus. The SARS-COV-2 virus consists of a structure of a similar scale as plant based nanoparticles. Its anticipated that the proposed plant based nanoparticles can attach to SARS COV-2 viruses, disrupting their structure and so kill the virus. Plant based nanoparticles are expected to disable the viruses, even before they break into the body. Nanotechnology is the design, characterization, production/synthesis and application of structures, devices and systems by controlling the shape and size at the nanometer scale. Nanoparticles are usually synthesized by chemical methods that usually used toxic reactants/reagents as reducing agents that further produce toxic by-products, which in turn are hazardous to the environment. However, recently, there has been the used of plant extracts as an alternative, complementary source of reducing agents to reduce metal ions to the corresponding metal nanoparticles. Plants contain an abundance and diverse arrays of natural products such as alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, steroids, tannins, coenzymes etc. that vary in concentration and type in different parts of the plants such as leaves, stems, roots, shoots, flowers, barks, fruits and seeds. These secondary metabolites can act as reducing and stabilizing agents for the bioreduction reaction to synthesize novel metallic nanoparticles. Plant based nanoparticles are less expensive to synthesise, ecofriendly and are thus less hazardous to the environment. This presentation on Green nanotechnology, surveys the use of plant extracts as possible green reagents for the synthesis of green nanoparticles to combat SARS-COV-2 virus.