Aphios awarded NIH grant to develop pathogen inactivation technology for blood products

Sep 30 2009

Aphios Corporation today announced that it has been awarded a RC-1 Challenge grant (No. 1RC1HL102822-01) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institute of Health’s (NIH) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to develop a generally-applicable pathogen inactivation technology for blood products.

The recent outbreaks of pandemic strains of the influenza virus such as the H1N1 swine flu, the worldwide AIDS epidemic and the periodic emergence of Ebola and SARS have highlighted a persistent concern in the health care community -- the need for effective pathogen inactivation and removal techniques for human blood plasma and plasma-derived products. There are also a number of emerging viruses such as West Nile and the H5N1 bird flu, and a number of potential bioterrorism pathogens such as B. anthracis, Yersinia pestis (plaque), Brucella and smallpox that are of concern to the safety of the human plasma supply chain. In addition to viruses and bacteria, parasites such as Babesia spp. and Plasmodium spp. are major threats of spreading diseases through transfusion.

The causes of the more rapid emergence and spread of these "killer" viruses and pathogens are not entirely known, but are thought to be caused by some combination of deforestation with urbanization of wild virus habitats, evolutionary mutations and rapid global travel. Annually, an estimated 3.8 million Americans are transfused with 28.2 million blood components derived from 12.8 million units of blood donated by apparently healthy volunteers. A rigorous scrutiny of blood donors and the screening of donated blood for various serological markers have significantly reduced the mortality and morbidity due to transfusion-associated infectious agents. Some enzyme immunoassays used for routine screening may detect viral antigens or antibodies, but not the infectious agents themselves. Thus, there could be an asymptomatic window period of infectivity responsible for a residual risk of post-transfusion infection. Current approaches such as pasteurization, solvent-detergent (SD), UV irradiation, and chemical and photochemical inactivation are not always effective against a wide spectrum of pathogens, are sometimes encumbered by process-specific deficiencies, and often result in denaturation of the biologics that they are designed to protect.