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\u00a9 BASILICOSTUDIO STOCK\/stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
The race to find a COVID-19 vaccine underlined the importance of understanding disease pathways. One promising area of research has been the identification \u2013 early and in detail \u2013 of changes in cell structure following penetration by a virus.<\/p>\n
At the moment, a novel technology capable of capturing this is soft X-ray microscopy (SXM). The microscope works like a CT scanner, but at the cellular level.<\/p>\n
\u201cSXM is really cool,\u201d says CoCID(opens in new window)<\/a> project coordinator Nicola Fletcher from University College Dublin(opens in new window)<\/a> (UCD) in Ireland. \u201cIt fits in between what we call light microscopy \u2013 ordinary microscopy \u2013 and electron microscopy, which looks in detail at single aspects of a cell. The beauty of SXM is that it takes a whole cell and looks at it in beautiful detail.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem however is that the illumination required for a soft X-ray microscope requires a football-stadium sized facility, called a synchrotron. \u201cThere are only six in the world, and these are extremely hard to access,\u201d adds Fletcher.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMiniaturising soft X-ray illumination<\/p>\n The EU-funded CoCID project sought to address this challenge by building on a solution developed by SiriusXT(opens in new window)<\/a>, a spin-off company from UCD. The start-up recently found a way to miniaturise the synchrotron into a small chamber that can fit in a laboratory, providing the same type of soft X-ray illumination as the synchrotron.<\/p>\n The CoCID project sought to further refine the technology and to demonstrate its efficacy in cell structure imaging. The project looked at viruses, which cause structural changes when they infect cells. A consortium including UCD, SiriusXT and various European experts in microscopy and viruses was brought together.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had groups studying hepatitis E, SARS-CoV-2, hepatitis C, and herpes virus infections,\u201d explains Fletcher. \u201cCan we understand the structural changes going on when viruses infect cells, and can we reverse these with drugs? These were the questions we wanted to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLong-term effects of diseases<\/p>\n The CoCID project helped to further refine and develop SiriusXT\u2019s technology, increasing the resolution and bringing the technology closer to the levels of a synchrotron. The project also complemented SiriusXT\u2019s technology with light microscopy.<\/p>\n \u201cUsing this technology, we were able to characterise cellular structural changes and identify places that were profoundly changed following infection,\u201d notes Fletcher. \u201cThis is a new way of looking at virus-infected cells.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, the project was able to capture images of cells post-viral infection. \u201cWe looked at the impact of antiviral therapies,\u201d she says. \u201cHepatitis C-infected cells look like little junk yards with what we think are parts of dead virus. This opens up new questions such as what this means for the health of cells going forward, and what the long-term effects of diseases like COVID could be.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTissue imaging with SXT<\/p>\n SiriusXT\u2019s microscope is now operational at UCD, with several development microscopes available at their own facility in Dublin. \u201cMoving forward, we as researchers want to look more closely at the practical implications of this technology,\u201d adds Fletcher.<\/p>\n This desire has led to a European Research Council(opens in new window)<\/a> funded project called NanoX<\/a>, which got underway in June 2025. The idea behind this project is to allow scientists to visualise the complex environment of diseased organs and tissues.<\/p>\n \u201cOur focus in this project is hepatitis E,\u201d explains Fletcher. \u201cWe want to try to understand where this virus replicates in the body, which will be critical to designing antiviral treatments in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDiscover other articles in the same domain of application<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Capturing exactly what happens to a cell when it is invaded by a virus could help scientists to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[5505,64535,64,8626,19064,18,135,19,17,11692,698,5975],"class_list":{"0":"post-102144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cell","9":"tag-cocid","10":"tag-covid-19","11":"tag-diagnostics","12":"tag-diseases","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-microscopy","18":"tag-virus","19":"tag-x-ray"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}