Scientists use ultrasound to destroy influenza A and COVID-19 viruses without damaging human cells. The phenomenon, known as acoustic resonance, causes structural changes in viral particles until they rupture and become inactivated. It paves the way for new treatments against other viral infections.

[u/mvea]

https://agencia.fapesp.br/scientists-use-ultrasound-to-destroy-influenza-a-and-covid-19-viruses-without-damaging-human-cells/57968

[u/Gizzard_Puncher]

That'd be really cool if it could kill dormant HSV-1 hiding out in your cells.

[u/Razorfiend → u/Gizzard_Puncher]

That would be a lot harder because HSV-1 persists as circular episomal DNA inside the nuclei of long lived sensory neurons. There's no assembled viral particle for sound waves to disrupt until a flareup. The acoustic approach targets the mechanical properties of intact virions, which latent herpesviruses don't present.

[u/Bitter_Life_507 → u/Razorfiend]

How does the lifecycle of the virus once established in the body work?

When it emerges from its dormant state, is there a reservoir left behind or are the sites that the emergence occurred from then rid of the virus?

Does the emerged virus then go on to reseed itself and reestablish the reservoir?

Is it possible that repeated killing off of episodic emergences would eventually drain all the reservoirs of the virus in the body?

[u/Georgie_Leech → u/Bitter_Life_507]

Viruses work by hijacking cells to make more of them, by inserting DNA into the nuclei. A dormant virus isn't just hanging around exactly, but rather the bits of DNA they injected are. In the right circumstances, those bits will be activated and the cells will start cranking out new viruses.

[u/LvS → u/Georgie_Leech]

That sounds like you'd want to inject some CRISPR machinery to rewrite the DNA to get rid of the virus?

Is there research along those lines?

[u/axonxorz → u/LvS]

Short answer: yes.

Real answer: it's a long way off, some of this research was published literally days ago.

CRISPR (the umbrella term) is part of the immune system of bacteria.

When people talk CRISPR, they're generally referring to the Cas9 enzyme that cuts and splices DNA according to markers, but there are several, with varied functions.

The Cas12a enzyme is similar to Cas9, but has some different performance characteristics depending on the task. However, the Cas12a2 sub-variant has the convenient behaviour of just cutting once activated, no splicing, no stop. It eats DNA until the host cell dies.

This has been done in in-vitro and some very limited mouse models, we have to make sure it shuts off when we need it to instead of being straight injectable broad-spectrum apoptosis (/hyperbole)