Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) is up 15% in premarket trade following news that the FDA granted emergency use authorization for the company’s 15-minute test that will be priced at just $5. Abbott says BinaxNOW works without relying on lab equipment – at a time when labs can take as long as two weeks to produce results – and uses a nasal swab and a small reactive card that can be administered by a range of healthcare workers, including pharmacists. The company plans to ship “tens of millions” of tests in September, ramping to 50M tests per month by the end of October.
Aytu BioScience managed to gain a lot of attention recently because of its latest collaborative development with Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on a potential Covid-19 treatment and cure. The Healight a potential new treatment for Covid – 19. It can also be used in cleaning medical devices, dental offices and commercial use.
Ultraviolet (UV) is a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from 10 nm to 400 nm. These wavelengths are shorter than that of visible light. Between the wavelengths 100 to 400 nm ultraviolet radiation (UV light) is subcategorized into three different ranges: Ultraviolet C (UVC) 100 — 280 nm, Ultraviolet B (UVB) 280 — 315 nm, and Ultraviolet A (UVA) 315 — 400 nm.
UVC light is weak at the Earth’s surface since it is absorbed by the ozone layer of the atmosphere, however UVC from manufactured lamps/lights has been widely used as a commercial germicide. Radiation between the 200 nm and 300 nm wavelengths are strongly absorbed by nucleic acid (DNA & RNA), leading to nucleic acid damage, and resulting in inactivation of the organism or death.
While UVC light has broad germicidal properties, it is also harmful to mammalian (human) cells. Alternatively, UVA and UVB devices have been FDA-approved with indications to treat human diseases including skin lymphoma, eczema, and psoriasis. Of the three spectrums, UVA light appears to cause the least damage to mammalian cells. Recent advances in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have made it much more feasible to manufacture and apply narrow band (NB) UVA light to internal organs.
Proof of Concept
An abstract led by the team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was published in the United European Gastroenterology Journal, October 2019, titled “Internally Applied Ultraviolet Light as a Novel Approach for Effective and Safe Anti-Microbial Treatment.” Here, the authors show that UVA light exhibits significant in vitro bactericidal effects in an array of clinically important bacteria. Additionally, this is the first study using intracolonic UVA application, which reports that UVA exposure is not associated with endoscopic or histologic injury. These findings suggest that UVA therapy can potentially provide a safe and effective novel approach to antimicrobial treatment via phototherapy on internal organs.
