Academics at the University of Nottingham have invented a new method to inactivate viruses without affecting valuable blood and plasma proteins.

The novel treatment has been demonstrated to give a >6-log reduction in non-enveloped viruses after treatment for less than 30 minutes. The new technology is free from detergents and surfactants, does not use ‘harmful’ chemicals and does not rely on high temperature treatment.

Currently, the reduction of risk for viral infection in blood plasma and blood plasma products relies largely on pasteurisation, surfactants and detergents. These do remove many contaminating viruses (the most common contaminants) but have deleterious effects on the resulting blood products.

Current treatments are therefore a compromise between effective treatment and destruction of blood proteins. Standard methods such as solvent detergent methods are able to denature envelope viruses (such as HIV and Hepatitis C) but are much less effective at treating non-envelope viruses such as Hepatitis A and Parvovirus.

Applications

This new technology could revolutionise the way blood plasma is purified and could remove the need for pasteurisation. Applications of this technology include purification of:

•    blood plasma at collection sites (blood pooling),
•    plasma during blood fractionation
•    plasma products obtained from fractionation
•    protein products from recombinant cell cultures.

The Benefits:

•    Effective  under near-normal physiological conditions
•    Does not involve the use of synthetic chemicals such as detergents or surfactants
•    Quick to apply
•    Cost-effective
•    Scalable for high throughput
•    Non-damaging to blood proteins
•    Free of harmful chemical residues
•    Reduces the volume of blood plasma discarded due to contamination

The technology has been progressed to proof-of-concept and has been shown to be very reproducible. For value to be realized from the technology a commercial partner or licensee is needed to evaluate the technology and take it from the lab to the market-place.

Data demonstrating how effective the technology is at reducing viral load (titre) are displayed in the following two graphs. In the first graph (A) relatively low levels of substance “I” cause a dramatic clearance of virus particles from plasma samples when the plasma is gently warmed to 42oC.

The second graph (B) shows the optimal temperature for reducing viral load in the presence of factor “I”. These results are rapid, being achieved after just 10 minutes of treatment.
 

A patent application has been filed by the University of Nottingham but has not yet been published. 

For value to be realized from the technology a commercial partner or licensee is needed to evaluate the technology and take it from the lab to the market-place. The University is therefore looking for potential licensees who could either license the technology direct or work with the University to take the technology to market.