I'm not a medical doctor or researcher but a few months ago I thought about using surfactants to kill viruses inside the body. Others are thinking about it also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7340033/
I thought, maybe there is a venn diagram here where a substance kills viruses, and the substance doesn't harm the host. In the intersection is something that could be medicine? What do you think?
It is a strange topic because cellular life is entirely about lipid bi-membranes and associated control of wet and dry nano-environments. For instance put the right proteins into a membrane and you can store energy in a proton gradient and convert it to A.T.P -- that's a mitochondrion.
Particularly in places like the nose, lungs, intestines and such, whatever thin layer of material is on the surface of your body is involved in innate immunity, inflammation, gas exchange, and other functions.
It is funny though that surfactants in the form of soap are a powerful guard against infectious disease simply by breaking dangerous organisms loose from their biofilms and washing them down the drain.
At the start of this pandemic I saw lots of articles about how soap kills viruses by ripping up their lipid structures. Later I thought, well surfactants are pretty safe for people. Very exciting times.
I thought, maybe there is a venn diagram here where a substance kills viruses, and the substance doesn't harm the host. In the intersection is something that could be medicine? What do you think?