BiodefensePotent new biodefense technology shows promise

Published 2 December 2009

Medizone International’s AsepticSure technology continues to break the “6 log” decontamination barriers, this time with two very different spore forming bacteria, Claustridium difficile and Bacillis subtilis

Stinson Beach, California-based Medizone International, Inc. said that in tests involving its proprietary AsepticSure technology, it continues to break “6 log” decontamination barriers, this time with two very different spore forming bacteria, Claustridium difficile and Bacillis subtilis. The company says these results establish AsepticSure as a potent sporicidal technology. “The implications of a 6.7 log reduction (99.99997 percent) in C difficile are indeed significant for the entire health care system,” stated Dr. Michael Shannon, director of medical affairs for Medizone. “However, even though our findings for Bicillis subtilis are preliminary, the potential of being able to eliminate 99.999992 percent (7.2 log kill) of an internationally accepted surrogate for Anthrax in 90 minutes will have national security implications.

In response to this news, Brad Goble, CEO of TDV GLOBAL and a Canadian expert in global health security and bio-terrorism countermeasures commented, “The international community continues to strengthen collaboration in the area of medical countermeasures, including placing a high priority on new and emerging technologies for decontamination. Medizone’s early laboratory results with Bicillis subtilis will attract great interest from the global defense and public health portfolios alike.”

Medizone believes that a field-hardened variant of the AsepticSure hospital unit currently being readied for scale up testing will have wide bio defense applications internationally as it will be easily deployable in response to virtually any terrorist assault, extremely effective against a broad range of lethal pathogens, easy to manage and maintain and most importantly, it has the potential to save lives.

Medizone’s CEO Edwin Marshall added, “Following the impressive results recently announced for MRSA, we immediately began to assess the capability of AsepticSure using the same updated technology with the spore forming bacteria C difficile, which is ubiquitous within hospitals and chronic care centers. Following those results we then worked with Bicillis subtilis, which represents the infamous and highly lethal terrorist agent, Anthrax. In both cases, these two pathogens remain very resistant to standard decontamination procedures and hence, seeing our technology virtually annihilate these two difficult spore formers has lead Medizone to a parallel track of development with its AsepticSure technology which we are convinced will open up the possibility for commercialization in both arenas.”

Medizone International is a research and development company engaged in developing its AsepticSure technology to decontaminate and sterilize hospital surgical suites, emergency rooms, intensive care units, schools, and other critical infrastructure.