Dr. Ajeet Kaushik, assistant professor of chemistry at Florida Polytechnic University, has had four of his academic papers added to the World Health Organization’s database of global literature on coronavirus disease.
Dr. Ajeet Kaushik, assistant professor of chemistry at Florida Polytechnic University, joined scientists around the world in shifting his attention in 2020 toward addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kaushik published several scientific papers in 2020 and 2021 that explore the use of nanomedicine, biosensors, and artificial intelligence to diagnose and combat COVID-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) has added nine of these papers to its database of global literature on coronavirus disease.
“If a country is facing a problem, as part of the University I have to do my best to solve this problem,” Kaushik said. “When the Ebola virus and the Zika virus came about, my advisor told me that we are working for humanity. We are working for society, so we have to do our best to solve a problem that is very important.”
Kaushik’s ongoing research focus has involved exploring advanced electrochemical sensing systems and nanomedicine for personalized health wellness. His contributions to the database include a paper on manipulative magnetic nanomedicine and the future of COVID-19 therapy, which was published in the journal Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery.
The article states that manipulative nanomedicine – delivering drugs to a highly specific part of the body – can provide a safer, more precise, and more effective way to treat patients grappling with multiple diseases and symptoms as a result of COVID-19.
Kaushik also was among the authors of a paper published in ACS Applied Bio Materials titled “Electrochemical SARS-CoV-2 Sensing at Point-of-Care and Artificial Intelligence for Intelligent COVID-19 Management,” a paper in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease titled “COVID-19: Review of a 21st Century Pandemic from Etiology to Neuro-psychiatric Implications,” and a paper in Biosensors and Bioelectronics titled “Functionalized terahertz plasmonic metasensors: Femtomolar-level detection of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins.” All three are featured in the WHO database as well.
“This infection is different – we are not dealing only with respiratory problems. We are dealing with heart failure, kidney problems, anxiety, depression, vision problems, and more, all because of coronavirus,” Kaushik said. “No one can propose a good single solution to handle this, so different people with different expertise have to do different jobs. I’m targeting the brain while other people are targeting lungs, the gut, the kidneys, and the behavioral health aspect.”
His efforts related to exploring nano-biotechnology for health wellness earned Kaushik the Early Career Award 2020 from the International Journal of Nanomedicine.
Kaushik is hopeful his contributions to the COVID-19 fight will have a strong impact.
“Maybe these papers can help someone who is working in a company and can now think about developing smart sensors for point-of-care testing and sending a drug to the brain using nanotechnology,” Kaushik said. “No one can handle this problem on their own, so we need a group of people working together to handle one single problem connected to the coronavirus.”
June 18 Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect additional publications included in the database.
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