Author: Dr. Johnathan Kiel

All the previous Nanobe posts have led to this one to show how the nanotechnology could be applied to the COVID-19 crisis. Aptamers against SARS-CoV-2 have already been made (Yanling Song et al. Discovery of Aptamers Targeting the Receptor-Binding Domain of the SARS-CoV‐2 Spike Glycoprotein. Anal. Chem. 2020, 92, 9895−9900; from China; unlike the US DoD, they have not abandoned this technology). Nanobes could be extended from diagnostics to treatment to autogenous vaccine by immune response redirection as it was intended to do for bio dense against agents that threaten the military where solutions need to be applied to as close as possible to the threat rapidly, even in non-permissive territories under the most primitive and restrictive conditions. The example above was designed for bacteria, not just viruses, to determine viability and antibiotic/antimicrobial sensitivity. A single virus diagnostic, as for SARS-CoV-2, would be a much simpler design.

The Department of Homeland Security is having a industry day today for Mediao Advisory: DHS to Hold Virtual Industry Day Seeking Innovative Solutions for Coronavirus Response. However, they have chosen to exclude nanotechnology and biotechnology, like that described in this blog and already vested in by the US government but abandoned. These are already poised to solve the problems addressed in their solicitation: The topic call is seeking commercially available technology solutions to address the following pandemic-related needs

• Testing & validation to ensure data privacy standards across contact tracing apps
• Video analytics for self-service TSA checkpoints
• Rapid sanitization of large surfaces
• Data aggregation across authoritative and non-authoritative sources
• Enhanced point-of-entry screening methods at DHS facilities

Solicitation: https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDUsInVyaSI6ImJwMjpjbGljayIsImJ1bGxldGluX2lkIjoiMjAyMDA4MTEuMjU1NDQxMjEiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL2dvLnVzYS5nb3YveGZYN2EifQ.DBvAWTJlhXUPzu7IAfHU5MZE8hEuH4-oApyKhZzpvHY/s/86442368/br/82210981199-l.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

09:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PT – Department of Homeland Security staff will discuss mission challenges, technology needs and doing business with SVIP. Speakers include: Melissa Oh, SVIP Managing Director, DHS S&T; Anil John, SVIP Technical Director, DHS S&T; John Fortune, Screening at Speed Program Manager, DHS S&T; Teresa Quitugua, Deputy Director, National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC); William Pharis, Program Manager, DHS S&T; Kevin Grottle, Program Manager, DHS S&T.

It’s hard to see anything that is positive about COVID-19. It, unlike agents like anthrax spores, is airborne but not a true aerosol transmitted agent. It can be effectively blocked by masks, distancing and good hand and other hygiene.

T cell memory and mucosal immunity develop in asymptomatic as well as mildly symptomatic individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2. Anti-CoV-2 antibody was detected in serum and saliva, with peak IgG levels by 16-30 days after disease onset. Whereas anti-CoV-2 IgA antibodies rapidly decayed, IgG antibodies remained up to 115 days in both saliva and serum (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.01.20166553v1 and https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.18.20155374v1). Those recovered from mild COVID-19 developed SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibody and neutralizing plasma, as well as virus-specific memory B and T cells which persisted, and in some cases increased over three months following symptoms’ appearance. Furthermore, the SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T and B cells exhibited potent antiviral immunity: memory T cells secreted IFN-γ and increased in number after second viral exposure, while memory B cells expressed receptors that neutralized virus and led to expressed neutralizing antibodies (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.11.20171843v2). Most importantly, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative exposed family members and recovered individuals with a history of asymptomatic and mild COVID-19. The data shows that SARS-CoV-2 induces robust, broad and highly functional memory T cell responses, implying natural exposure, vaccination, or infection may prevent reinfection and severe COVID-19 (https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)31008-4.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420310084%3Fshowall%3Dtrue .

S-D was synthetic DALM Nanobes and v-D was biosynthetic replicate Nanobes.

Nanoparticles with broad spectrum of species-binding coating microbeads captures (magnetically) living unknown spotted fever- like microbe from Ghana West Africa and brings it back alive for successful isolation and culture (growing microbe tracked in cell culture by fluorescent tag).

Safe on skin,

Cold Plasma could also be used to scrub air of SARS-CoV-2 virus. Growing out of the USAF Counterproliferation program.

Cold plasma has promise for use against brain cancer. https://www.labroots.com/trending/cancer/18893/using-plasma-scalpels-chemotherapy-brain-cancer

I am taking a pause from COVID updates, since much of the literature for now are just iterations of previous information, to explain a major motivation for opening the conversation on emerging infectious diseases in the first place. The USAF AFRL Counterproliferation Team’s original motivation was to meet Special Forces needs in Biodefense. They were to quickly detect, identify, safely secure and bring back biological samples from non-permissive territory for further analysis. They needed a way to keep agents alive and safely secure as well as a method to detect them on contaminated surfaces, and precisely and non-destructively kill them without damaging or destroying sensitive equipment. Out of this evolved the synthetic Nanobes which could detect and reveal agents in samples or on surfaces by fluorescence, magnetically collect them after specifically attaching to the agent through synthetic binding short poly nucleic acids (aptamers), and even destroy them by microwave or radio frequency radiation or indicate the agents destruction by simultaneous loss of fluorescence as with cold plasma. The use of random aptamers even allowed for the detection and selection of new Nanobes in the field for future specific use. Unfortunately, the technology to meet these Special Forces’ needs brought up nefarious dual use as an offensive weapon which placed the nanotechnology in international law limbo. I still think it has great promise and this is why I am sharing the information now here and in my books.

How Nanoparticles can kill biological agents: other bacilli and anthrax spores (lower picture at 100,000 Nanobes to one bacterium or spore). These Nanobes can be replicated in host bacteria, animal and human cells. They are activated by low energy (total) electromagnetic radiation and can also inactivate viruses.

Toward the end of research at Brooks City-Base, San Antonio, Texas, Air Force Research Laboratory, we investigated the in vivo antiviral (against vaccinia virus, a stand-in for smallpox virus) activity of Nanobes. “Oddly enough, when the DALM producing pSV2neoNR1.1 plasmid (also produced nitrite and nitric oxide) was used, whether with scrambled RNAi or not, the viral plaque formation was significantly inhibited. This meant the NR1.1 probably had a non-specific viral inhibiting effect perhaps by delaying the cell cycle progression preventing viral replication. Unfortunately, the mechanism or its optimization was never pursued because the research ended with Brooks demise”, in 2011. The Black Dragon Trilogy: Nanowarfare.

After 46 years, approaching 50 years, now, only as an observer and interpreter of the scientific literature and data, I am deeply saddened by the state of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), especially in the US, and less so in the world. But what distresses me more is the veterinary profession and to a lesser extent the medical profession (the latter excused because of their professional isolation from the natural world and all its animal occupants with their myriad of infectious diseases). Having been on the fringe between veterinary medicine and human medicine in the field (both literally and as far as subject matter) of diseases in nature transmissible to man and domestic animals, I have often been rejected at the tables of both and been in a sporadically supported field that was occasionally of interest to the military when in foreign lands and engaged in defending against biowarfare. One glaring frustration for me, in addition to the medical profession’s “surprises” about coronaviruses, which have been evident in animal coronaviruses and largely ignored for a long time, until SARS1, MERS, and now SARS2, when humans became involved, is the veterinary profession’s surprise about humans transmitting the zoonotic virus to animals (anthroponosis) (https://www.kbtx.com/2020/08/06/texas-am-research-project-identifies-first-covid-19-positive-cats-in-texas/; http://tx.ag/BCSCovidResearch) at my old Alma Matter. These zoonotic/anthroponotic occurrences in cats, dogs, and mink indicate the true nature of the virus, it newly spans humans and animals and doesn’t “see” a difference. It was exactly where global bio surveillance should have made the most difference, the time it works in most and best, between outbreaks and spillovers. Where it needs to be adequately supported by private and government resources, but when there is no global pandemic yet and therefore, these entities have the least interest and other more important priorities, it goes wanting. So sad and we are paying for this neglect in arrears.