Virus inactivation

These techniques are used widely in the food and blood plasma[1] industries, as those products can be harmed by the presence of viral particles.

It is important to consider, however, the fact that the level of removal of the viruses is dependent on the size of the pores of the nanofilter.

The effectiveness of this process can vary greatly between viruses and its efficiency can change based on the buffer used.

Viral inactivation is used widely in the blood plasma industry and manufacture of monoclonal antibody based biopharmaceuticals.

This process, developed by the New York Blood Center,[9] is the most widely used viral inactivation method to date.

The solvent creates an environment in which the aggregation reaction between the lipid coat and the detergent happen more rapidly.

Equipment designed to purify post-virus inactivated material would be necessary to guard against contamination of subsequent process streams.

Inactivation of viruses by means of pasteurization can be very effective if the proteins that you are trying to protect are more thermally resistant than the viral impurities with which they are in solution.

Some of the more prominent advantages of these types of processes are that they require simple equipment and they are effective for both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses.

[10] UV rays can damage the DNA of living organisms by creating nucleic acid dimers.

Once the DNA dimerised, the virus particules cannot replicate their genetic material which prevent them from spreading.

UV light in combination with riboflavin has been shown to be effective in reducing pathogens in blood transfusion products.

[11][12] Riboflavin and UV light damages the nucleic acids in viruses, bacteria, parasites, and donor white blood cells rendering them unable to replicate and cause disease.

It has been shown through experimentation, that increasing the viral count (or level of activity) of a sample by a factor of 104 or 105 of the original will only change the virus removal/inactivation ratios by one order of magnitude [reference?].

The number or level of activity is taken at the beginning and at the end of the process stream and used in the calculation of Reduction Factor.