‘Decoy’ nanoparticles can block HIV and prevent
infection

Flipping the standard viral drug targeting approach on
its head, engineers at the University of California San Diego have
developed a promising new “nanosponge” method for preventing HIV
from proliferating in the body: coating polymer nanoparticles with
the membranes of T helper cells and turning them into decoys to
intercept viral particles and block them from binding and
infiltrating the body’s actual immune cells.