Hello, my name is Dr. Laura
Patterson-Fortin, lead for BioLargo Water’s disinfection R&D team in
Edmonton. My team has previously reported many exciting results using the AOS
for water disinfection. In today’s blot post, I hope to inform our shareholders
and followers of some really positive recent results we’ve achieved in virus
disinfection, and to share a little bit on how and why we choose to use viral
surrogates for our studies, namely Bacteriophages T4 and MS2.
First, the results! You may
have read in previous disclosures that our AOS consistently eliminates about 4
logs (or 99.99%) of Bacteriophage MS2 from water, which is more than a
sufficient level of virus disinfection for most target water treatment
applications. We’re proud to say that because of physical improvements to our
AOS, we’ve increased our MS2 disinfection performance rate to 6 logs (or
99.9999%), which is effectively a 100x increase in performance. This is
terrific news, because once we prove this increase in virus disinfection
performance translates at industrial scale, we believe it will represent a significant
competitive advantage over other water treatment technologies due to the AOS' greater kill rates and lower operational costs compared to other water disinfection technologies in many applications.
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| Source: The Institute for Molecular Virology |
Why do we (and others who do
water disinfection development work) use Bacteriophage MS2 to test our AOS’
virus disinfection capabilities? A fine question, reader. The reason we test
our technology’s ability to kill viruses using a surrogate like MS2 is that
it’s a safe, cost-effective, and relevant way to assess virus disinfection
performance compared to directly testing with highly dangerous human pathogens
like hepatitis A, Norwalk virus, or Enteroviruses. Typically, only very special
(and very expensive) labs with strict certifications work with human viruses,
and even if that weren’t the case, it’s very time-consuming and expensive to
work with human viruses. This is why the scientific community generally accepts
virus disinfection results with Bacteriophage MS2 and other surrogates, with
the understanding that once a technology goes commercial it will be tested and
certified to work against actual human viruses.
This is why we are very
excited about our recent results with MS2 disinfection – they show that our AOS
is a powerful tool for disinfecting water containing viruses, and we’re anxious
to see it commercialized and treating water around the world.
If you found this post interesting, or you would like to
learn more about virus disinfection, don’t hesitate to engage us on social
media at BioLargo Water’s Twitter account @BioLargoWater and BioLargo’s Twitter
@BioLargo, or at our Facebook
page.
What is a BioLargo
Spotlight?
It’s an exciting time
at BioLargo. We’re moving fast, and it can be difficult to keep our
stockholders and the investing public informed of our progress. In light of
this, we will be posting a series of short articles titled “BioLargo
Spotlight”, highlighting certain business activities and other important
information in between our required SEC filings. Of course, these do not
replace our public filings, which contain more complete information than can be
delivered in this forum, and thus we urge you to carefully read and rely on
those filings for definitive information, and to review our risk factors and
caution regarding forward-looking statements. We are optimistic about our
business as we work hard to continue to grow and ultimately generate profits
for our stockholders.
Legal Disclaimer
Our attorneys remind
us that while we believe these developments are important and that these small
victories could add up and lead to big victories, at this stage they do not
rise to the level of an official material disclosure. As the size and magnitude
of these developments become material, we will naturally report that
information in an 8-K and our regular SEC filings.
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