Christina Drake, PhD, owner and manager of Kismet Technologies, talks about how cerium oxide nanoparticles could be applied to disinfectant materials.
Tell me first of all, what gave you the idea or sparked the idea for looking at this kind of disinfectant solution?
Drake: So, during the beginning of the pandemic when we were under shelter-in-place orders in Florida, everyone was pretty hypersensitive about touching surfaces. I went to a local grocery store, and I watched an employee in due diligence spray disinfected on a surface and immediately wipe it off. So, my initial reaction was, oh, my goodness. That surface didn’t get disinfected. But then as I kept grocery shopping and driving home I was like, you know, there’s got to be a better solution than what’s currently available. If it takes, you know, four, five, six minutes for a disinfect and work on a surface – because it’s not practical for businesses to keep surfaces wet for that long. So, I drove home, thought about it, thought about like what materials, you know, might actually work for that. And then I did some literature research, and I reached out to Dr. Sudipta Seal who was my doctoral advisor when I was in grad school, threw some ideas past him. He said, you know, maybe. But then by the next day because we’d gone back and forth on a few things – like, well, how would this work? What’s the mechanism? And by then he was like, oh, we need to get a virologist on this. And that’s how Dr. Parks got pulled in. So pretty much within a couple of days we had a team pulled together. We had the idea pulled together, what material system we would use and how we would go after those.
I’m going to ask you just for purposes of us moving a little bit. You were in the grocery store. Can you tell me your – some people call them the aha moment. Can you tell me exactly what happened when you’re like something went off in your thinking, this isn’t going to work. There’s got to be a better way. Can you tell me about that?
Drake: Yeah. So watching that employee in the grocery store apply disinfectant and then immediately wipe it off and realizing, you know, this is not a disinfected surface even though he was trying to do his best – right? – and thinking there just has to be a better way. And on the drive home just thinking through, oh, what are different materials that could act faster than a quaternary ammonium compound or, you know, a hydrochloride something that’s commonly used in a disinfectant? Did some research as soon as I got home on the computer and it was just like, oh, no, no, no, no. Wait. There is something that could work. And it just happened to be a material system that my former PhD adviser was a world-renowned expert in. And so (laughter) it just seemed – things clicked very fast after that.
Talk to me a little bit about what that system is that you and your former adviser after comparing notes thought might work? Tell me what it is and again it’s for a consumer audience. So, if you can just describe what it’s normally designed to do and what you think it might do.
Drake: Yeah. So, we’re using cerium oxide nanoparticles. It’s lay term it’s called Ceria. It’s often used in catalytic applications like for fuel, combustion applications. And it’s really good at oxidizing, switching its oxidation state which would seem odd. Like, why would that work as a disinfectant? And it’s because there are two viral deactivation mechanisms that do depend on oxidation. And so that was the first click when I realized, oh yeah, that would work when I was reaching out to Dr. Seal. So it’s when you put these Ceria nanoparticles, when you’re making them in nano form, you can engineer the surface to make them do this oxidation in a very specific way under very specific conditions. And that’s important because we need them to be bio safe, and we need to them to have rapid oxidation in order to react fast.
And how fast would that reaction have to be?
Drake: So, our first guess is that it will be under 30 seconds. We don’t know if it’ll be, you know, like five or 10 seconds. But we’re anticipating under 30 seconds just based on other things that have been published in the literature and looking at the rate of reaction of the Ceria nanoparticles.
When you’re talking about oxidation, you’re talking about that is fuel based, my first thought is toxicity. How – on the flip side you make sure it kills the virus, but is it toxic to anybody else?
Drake: Yes. So when these nanoparticles, if you engineer them correctly – so this is part of the specialization in using Dr. Sudipta Seal to do those. So, he has worked on canta therapeutics using nanoceria, so bio-safe forms of Ceria. So, when it’s in the body, it behaves as an antioxidant and does no harm to cells. There are forms of Ceria you could make that would not have that effect, but the correct engineering and synthesis of them makes them safe.
Now for our viewers again, when you’re talking about nanoparticles, can you describe for our viewers what it is that you’re using? What are nanoparticles and how do you need to work with them so that you can make them in a liquid form?
Drake: Nanoparticles are anything that has a dimension between 1 and 100 nanometers, so very small, so on about the size of a virus, which makes it again good for trying to engineer something to work specifically with a virus. And in order to get them suspended into something like a solution, you do have to work with the surface. So we are working on a suspension chemistry to get it to actually go into a spray so that you can use a normal pump spray to get it onto a surface, which sounds simple but there is a lot of surface engineering to get that nanoparticle to behave right, be bio-safe and also do all the disinfection mechanisms that we’re asking it to do.
After all of those hoops you jump through, can you tell me how close you are, what step you’re at and what’s next to come?
Drake: We have a formulation chemistry for the spray itself. And we feel fairly confident with that. For the nanoparticle synthesis, we’ve done initial batches of those and they have shown good antiviral activity against a coronavirus, not SARS COVID 2, but against one that we feel will be an appropriate surrogate. And we’re seeing efficacy against different types of viruses depending on the form that we use on the order of log three to log five which is what you need to actually be antiviral.
So again, it’s a three-pronged process. You’ve got something that you think will work well in the suspension method. You’re pretty confident on your delivery method.
Drake: Yes.
And you’re also confident that this is going to kill the virus and not hurt or injure animals.
Drake: Yes. Yes.
Because I’ll have to simplify it into those steps. And you said you’re looking at the liquid to make sure that it’s something that would spread, that you can wipe. And can you describe a little bit about what you have in the lab right now? I know it’s very small scale and just a little bit, but what is it that you’re actually looking at?
Drake: So, some of it is just the chemical dispersant for the spray itself to make sure that it wets the surface and delivers the nanoparticle directly onto the surface. The next step will be adding the film former to that, so the thing that actually helps to add here the nanoparticle to the surface once it’s wet and moved across the entire surface. So, we’re on step one which is the wet ability. And we’ll be moving on to the film forming.
What’s your time frame?
Drake: Our time frame for this, we’re moving a lot faster than we had initially anticipated. The chemistry that we’ve chosen for the spray are chemistries that are for the most part already available in other sprays. So, they’re things that already have been proven in other applications, except for the active ingredient, so that’s where the anti-rapid antiviral and continuing regenerative antiviral properties come from. So, we anticipate having a full formulation ready by December or January.
What’s going to be the benefit for the consumer when you guys come up with something that really works well?
Drake: The benefit is not having to constantly apply a disinfectant where there might be harsh chemicals like a lung irritant or possibly skin irritant and to be able to have antiviral properties on that surface for 8, 16, 24 hours depending upon how long the surface is touched. So, you’re using less disinfectant and you’re ensuring you know for an often-touched surface like a doorknob or your toilet or a sink that those surfaces have rapid antiviral properties with them.
And that was my next question. First of all, how long could it last? And one of the things that we’ve seen is the run on Lysol cleaners, things with ammonium, and Lysol wipes, you can’t find. I mean, that’s like gold. You’ve hit the jackpot, the lottery if you find those things. In what ways will this be a product that would really help everyone feel a little better?
Drake: Yeah, because you would not need as much of it to – for the amount of disinfection that you need across a surface. And then I think for things like schools, daycares, public buildings, you know, you’re talking about feeling more confident when you go in the elevator and pushing a button, you know, if it’s being disinfected this way. Because once you disinfect a surface there are no long-term antiviral films that are on the market so you can’t feel confident unless someone just disinfected that surface that there isn’t coronavirus on the surface. So that’s one of those things just to give a little bit more – you know, in terms of protection against coronavirus because no one thing is going to completely solve the problem. But right, in a suite of approaches I think it helps overall for transmission of coronavirus.
A couple of technical questions, is there any regulatory process that this would need to go through, and can you tell me what that is?
Drake: So, the third thing that we’re doing on top of the nanoparticles, the film and spray dispersant formulation, the third is the EPA. So, we are actively putting together the EPA test that we will be doing to submit to the EPA. And our hopes is to actually to have all these submitted in December or January.
So are they moving on a faster scale then because this is something…
Drake: Yes. So, you can ask for an emergency waiver. And so, we’ve looked at the other studies that have been done this year by companies making claims against SARS COVID 2. And so, we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re using their test methodology and using the EPA guidelines. And ASTM has a standard for a virucidal efficacy on nonporous surfaces. And so, we are using a test method built around those.
Now a quick question about Kismet Technologies. Is that a spinoff company from UCF and can you tell me a little bit about that?
Drake: No, I started Kismet Technologies last year just because I felt like I wanted to work on the technologies I wanted to work on. And the company is based out of the UCF incubation program though. So I I had to apply to the program. And I was accepted in March of last year, and I had no funding at that time. But I had lots of ideas. So, I think they were like OK. She’s got ideas. And so being in the UCF business incubator, I was close to Sudipta Seal. And so, it made it easy to collaborate and work on things together.
Is there anything didn’t ask you that you want to make sure that people know?
Drake: Just follow the instructions on disinfectants like, you know, in the meantime because it’s really, it’s both a waste of money to apply especially hard-to-find disinfectants on surfaces and then immediately wipe them off. But then the surfaces also are not disinfected.
So, you think you’re safe and you have that false sense of security.
Drake: Yeah.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News.
END OF INTERVIEW
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