UH, NASA partner

New approaches could enable health care professionals to sanitize, reuse masks on-site

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s John H. Glenn Research Center and University Hospitals have collaborated to develop new methods and technologies for decontaminating personal protective equipment for aerospace applications, and for safeguarding the health of workers caring for patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

A team of researchers recently developed and tested two new approaches that could enable health care professionals to sanitize masks on-site and safely reuse them. The approaches also may be useful to the aerospace community when traditional sterilization techniques might not be available.

“NASA strives to ensure the technology we develop for space exploration and aeronautics is broadly available to benefit the public and the nation,” said Glenn Center Director Marla Pérez-Davis. “If our technology can lend a hand in overcoming this crisis, we will do whatever we can to put it in the hands of those who need it.”

According to UH, results of tests on both methods — atomic oxygen and peracetic acid (a disinfectant commonly used in the health care, food, and water treatment industries) — are promising.

The atomic oxygen decontamination method currently is being evaluated and early results are favorable. The peracetic acid method has been proven to work for five cycles of decontamination. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the latter for an emergency-use authorization.

“While we currently have sufficient PPE on hand to care for the patients we have in our facilities today, we need to proactively and prudently plan for potential future needs,” said Dr. Daniel I. Simon, chief clinical and scientific officer at UH and president of UH Cleveland Medical Center.

“This includes factoring in the potential for supply chain shortages due to COVID-19 surges in other states while also taking into account our need to restart non-emergent and elective services, which requires being mindful about current usage and putting in place go-forward conservation strategies,” Simon added. “The opportunity to pool resources and quickly bring about PPE sterilization solutions for the benefit of our caregivers is truly remarkable.”

Peracetic Acid Method

Doctors Amrita John and Shine Raju, infectious disease and critical care physicians in the Department of Medicine at UH Cleveland Medical Center, are examining peracetic acid as an option for decontaminating PPE.

According to Raju, “exciting results” have been discovered.

“We found that the peracetic acid disinfection method is very effective in killing 99.9999 percent of viruses and even highly resistant bacterial spores from contaminated N95 masks without any detectable loss of filtration, structural integrity, and strap elasticity for up to five decontamination cycles,” he said. “We believe the method is the fastest method of mass decontamination of N95 respirators currently available.”

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Case Western Reserve University are also participants in the multi-institutional study, UH confirms.

John said it has been amazing collaborating with such a multidisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners to discover “innovative” ways to conserve PPE.

“As physicians and researchers, we aim to develop solutions that can work for the multitude of (PPE) categories as well as the variety of operational needs of a given hospital or health system,” she said. “In some instances, there may be needs beyond the FDA-approved methods currently in place, and we want to ensure we are wellpositioned to offer options for our patients and health care workers should circumstances arise.”

Dr. Curtis Donskey, an infectious disease physician at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, supervised the microbiology testing for the peracetic acid study.

“The disinfection system could provide a means for in-hospital decontamination of large amounts of PPE during the coronavirus pandemic,” Donskey said. “Further testing is needed to determine if more than five decontamination cycles can be performed with no adverse effects on PPE performance and we aim to assess that over the next several weeks.”

The collaboration was facilitated by UH Ventures, the innovation and commercialization arm of UH.

SUBMITTED Dr. Amrita John, left, and Dr. Shine Raju are infectious disease and critical care physicians in the Department of Medicine at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. The health care system is working with NASA to develop methods to decontaminate PPE.