World’s First Face Mask Designed to Capture and Deactivate SARS-CoV-2 Could Lower COVID-19 Infection Rate

Most commercially available masks are unable to efficiently filter the tiny aerosols that contain the virus. Viruses that are attached to the filtering materials can penetrate through a moist mask and, thus, increase the risk of infection.

AXIM Biotechnologies, Inc. (San Diego, CA, USA) has filed a provisional patent for a first-in-class face mask that captures and deactivates SARS-CoV-2. AXIM’s novel face mask is designed to provide enhanced protection from infection by capturing the viruses in the face mask filter layer before it reaches or after it exits the user's respiratory system. To accomplish the goal of capturing SARS-CoV-2 on the face mask, AXIM has developed a cost-effective treatment for the face mask surfaces that utilizes a proprietary set of reagents that are permanently embedded into the mask filter which then captures the virus instantaneously on contact.

Numerous studies have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein enters human host cells by locking its spike protein to cell-surface proteins. AXIM’s initial laboratory testing has demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein tightly binds to the capture reagents finely interspersed throughout face mask fibers, therefore significantly increasing its capture efficiency when compared to the commercially available masks and further preventing the virus from entering or exiting the user’s respiratory system. AXIM is examining the regulatory pathways necessary to obtain approval to distribute the face mask in the US, either the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and in the European Union. AXIM plans to license face mask manufacturers to handle large-scale production and distribution of the face mask while manufacturing the preparatory reagent ingredients in its own laboratory.

“Our highly accredited scientists have proven that by coating the filtration layers of our face masks with our proprietary reagents, which SARS-CoV-2 binds to, we can ‘capture’ the virus in the masks to provide enhanced protection and lower the rate of COVID-19 infection,” said AXIM Biotech CEO John W. Huemoeller II.

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