Saving the horseshoe crab fighting the virus with nano science
so today i’m going to tell you a little
story
about my evolution from academia into
enterprise
and his story starts like any other
story
a typical day in the lab and an
inspirational walk on the beach
maybe not quite like every story but
needless to say i was a graduate student
at the joint school of nanoscience and
nano engineering working with fullerenes
preparing for my dissertation when i
received a phone call
from an old friend and an industry
collaborator
and they said to me on the phone
anthony we need to figure out something
with forage fish and this fishing
problem
i had no clue what he was talking about
that day
but we spent a lot of time on the phone
discussing forage fish
i’ll tell you a little bit about this
fish the forage fish
are small schooling fish they’re oily
we typically catch them by the loads
using large nets
they’re extremely important to all of
our oceans
as they form the backbone of all of the
oceans nutrition
they transfer the energy from plankton
up the food chain
so all of the fish in the ocean rely on
these all of our seabirds that fly over
into the ocean rely on these fish
and our coastal mammals and other
animals all rely on these fish
the challenge that was presented to me
on the phone that day
was their utilization which was
unsustainable
historically we considered these fish
unlimited
but what happened over time was multiple
industries
started sticking their hands in the
forage fish cookie jar
we use these fish to feed our farmed
fish
aquaculture as they make these fish
healthy for us to eat
we also eat these fish and we take these
fish as vitamin supplements from their
fish oils that’s extracted from them
they’re also ground up and fed into our
barnyard animals as agriculture feed
and even our companion kitties eat them
it’s in our cat food
but i’m going to start my journey my
talk with you today
about their utilization as bait
so every year about 40 percent of the
total fish that we capture in our oceans
are these small schooling fish again
their neck caught very easily to catch
large amounts of them
about 18 million tons of these fish get
used
to bait a trap so we’re using a fish to
catch a fish
and that’s what that conversation was
about how can we create something
more sustainable because the utilization
by all of these industries was just too
much now
it was starting to affect the oceans it
was also starting to affect the coastal
vibrancies of fishing communities
they needed solutions and the methods
that are used to capture these fish
are not great these large nets that run
across the bottom of the ocean
scraping and destroying the floor and
coral they also
indiscriminately catch other animals and
trapped them within the net
so as a scientist
we devised the strategy and we went into
the lab
and the r d process went from there what
we had to do
was figure out why crustaceans were
attracted to a trap
that was being baited with these forage
fish
seemed simple enough we had all the
tools at our hands
what we needed to do was figure out
exactly
why the crustacean traveled to that trap
with the forage fish and we had to
identify individual molecules that were
being released
from the fish as it sat in the trap and
we use things like
high performance liquid chromatography
and mask
spectroscopy to be able to identify the
individual molecules
that were being emitted from these fish
traveling around the trap
and lowering crustaceans in
we found a lot of molecules and we were
able to articulate
which combination of molecules had the
most profound
impact on luring these species to a trap
and we really thought we were close to
being done
but then we had to figure out how to
make a matrix
a matrix that would adapt to all fishing
communities
because fishing is very different in
different places it might be shorter
a couple of days in some places it might
be two weeks in other places
and the temperatures change so we had to
accommodate
the industry in order to be able to have
a successful deployment
of an alternative bait that could
introduce sustainability
and vibrancy back into this sector
so we designed several different
matrixes
with the fortunate help from
organizations like the national science
foundation
and the north carolina sea grant the
infrastructure that we had
available to us at the joint school of
nanoscience and nano engineering
we were able to come up with an
alternative a synthetic and sustainable
method of fishing without ever having to
use
fish and it was something the industry
needed so when we met with the industry
there were several things that we had to
incorporate into this idea
not just something that worked but we
had to solve some pains along the way
and the research had to be dedicated to
creating a bait
that didn’t require refrigeration or
storage
and it was stable and it was very easy
to use
and it could attract crabs and lobsters
and could be consistently available and
competitive
with what they were already using they
were
thrilled and so were we
and then i got another phone call
and on this day the person on the other
end
said does your bait work for eels
and welks along the northeast here eels
and welks are commonly caught
i honestly didn’t know the answer to
that question but i had two
undergraduate students at the time and i
told them
look into this
and the next morning they came in and
said anthony
it’s bigger than bait it’s horseshoe
crabs
horseshoe crabs well horseshoe crabs
were what this industry was using as
bait
but what we learned was the value of the
horseshoe crab to society
was tremendous so what if i were to tell
you
that the blood from a horseshoe crab has
affected everyone listening to this
and it’s considered one of the most
precious liquids on earth
and it’s about sixty thousand dollars a
gallon
would you believe me what if i told you
their blood was blue
well let me tell you a little bit about
this unique blood from this
ancient arthropod the horseshoe crab has
survived
all of earth’s mass extinctions it is a
very resilient organism
and within its blue blood is a single
circulating cell type
it’s called the amoeba site and within
that amoeba cider proteins
and those proteins interact with the
gram-negative bacteria
whenever a gram-negative bacteria is in
the presence
of these amoebosites a gel clot forms
and why this was important to us was
because
this method became the approved method
and the ideal method
to ensure that anything that was
injected into us
an antibiotic perhaps more timely in
these days
a vaccine of which we have a hundred and
twenty in development globally right now
an instrument that might be implanted in
us
all of these things are safeguarded
quality controlled
through this ancient horseshoe crabs
blood cell
the amoeba site
but as i mentioned there’s a problem
our coastlines are changing they’re
eroding which is the areas where the
horseshoe crabs spawn
secondary to that our oceans are
changing
i already mentioned that they were used
as bait but another challenge is their
utilization
and serving us as a quality control
measurement
right now we go out to the beaches and
collect crabs and bring them back to a
facility
and their bled for about a third of
their blood volume and then in time
they’re redeployed
and this process can take a day or two
or three
and it can be challenging for these
animals
so we thought hmm what if we could
aquaculture them
sounds like a good opportunity for both
modern medicine and the vital species
so that’s exactly what we did we went
back to all of our friends at the
national science foundation
that helped us do the organo bait
research we went back to the north
carolina sea grant
we reached out to everyone we knew and
we decided
to prove that we could do horseshoe crab
aquaculture
which would be an ability to grow these
crabs and maintain these crabs in a
pristine environment
proximal to where you would take their
blood and you could ensure
that their environment was managed and
safe and optimized
and what we would do is we would provide
them the best
feed that you could to make sure that
they’re healthy
and our goal was to be able to eliminate
the need for wild capture
preserving this species and maintaining
this great
donation that this species makes to
modern medicine
it took some time but we got there
here in north carolina we have horseshoe
crabs
they eat some of the best functional
feed you can imagine
and we believe that they can continue
making this contribution based on this
research
but we really weren’t done there because
we had a new opportunity
you see the amoeba site and the lal
always had an opportunity in human
medicine but it had never been
found compatible in a blood specimen
due to inhibitors or interference
so we set out to prove that because we
now have proved we could aquaculture
horseshoe crabs
and we could make an unlimited supply of
lal sustainably
could we use this to optimize
the way that we detect for bacteria in
patients in the hospital
you see because this is a big problem
there’s not many great instruments out
there that do it
and a lot of times by the time you know
it it can be too late
the bacteria has overburdened the system
and the patient has drifted into sepsis
which is the number one cause of
untimely death in the hospital
so we thought we could remove this
problem associated with current methods
which is unreliable and takes a couple
of days and days are not what people
have
given that we had now an unlimited
supply of lal we had a real opportunity
to make a meaningful impact
and just as we were getting there we
were so close
we discovered exactly what we needed and
we’re ready to move forward
and all of a sudden our world changed
we got confronted with a viral pandemic
and the way that the world the very
fabric of the world
was disrupted the way we did everything
but we weren’t ready to stop anything we
were doing what we wanted to do was
leverage what we knew
and figured out how we could apply that
right now
towards this situation knowing that we
were going to go back to these other
things but we had a moral obligation to
these
new risks that were being imposed in
society
so we had learned a lot along the way
about the horseshoe crab but more
importantly the horseshoe crabbit taught
us a lot about
pathogens in order to conduct the
research
we needed to understand how pathogens
behave
when dealing with a new virus
we also had a very strong foundation in
nanoscience
so we thought giving what the horseshoe
crab had taught us
and our understanding of nanoscience
what if we could create
an atomic scale anti-microbial
that was urgently needed and could solve
a lot of the problems associated with
the current pandemic
we arrived at fullerenes which is a
nanoscale molecule
of about one nanometer in size 120 times
smaller than a virus
that can be specially functionalized to
impart
a massive antimicrobial effect
and we considered how we could apply
this to the current situation
and we looked at the shortcomings
associated with the current situation
masks that we wear today are great
but they predominantly function as
barrier garments
preventing something from getting
through it’s a size filtration
we thought okay we might have an
improvement here
using what the horseshoe crap taught us
using what we knew about fullerenes
using what we knew about atomic scale
interactions
we also looked at the other areas that
could be improved
the garments we wear the booties on our
feet the lab coats the physicians coats
the sheets the upholstery the fabric in
hospitals
all of these areas where these pathogens
were being found
what if we had a way to make them
bioactive
give them an ability to draw pathogens
in but not just hold them
impart an effect that destroyed them and
we could eliminate it
significantly reducing transmissibility
of the pathogen and that’s what we’re
focusing on now because
we have an obligation and a vision
we believe that frontline workers
need better safety and they shouldn’t be
scared when they go into work
and we think that we have the research
that could help improve this situation
or those in nursing homes can see their
families again because we could create
mechanisms to safeguard them
no one should feel unsafe at work but if
we could improve
the way that we protect our employees
the world could get back to operating
potentially returning to some sense of
normalcy
we might go out to dinner again
doing things a different way using the
research
that was available and thinking
a little differently maybe drawing some
experience from a nano material
or listening to a million-year-old
blue-blooded arthropod
we’ll get back to traveling seeing the
places
helping those areas that rely on tourism
and bringing the world back together
the goal here in this talk is to inspire
everyone you’re going to be met
with a lot of challenges
i am embrace the risk and i hope that
you will too
take on the risk embrace every new
opportunity
whether it was going from forage fish to
horseshoe crabs
all the way down to antimicrobial
substances that could help
in a pandemic stay motivated
and embrace every risk in every
opportunity
scholastically and thoughtfully thank
you