NaNots: Targeted Removal of Pathogenic Molecules

    Last Thursday morning I was a virtual attendee at the ARDD 2022 Meeting held in Copenhagen this week.  At 11:22 AM Seattle time a very interesting 20-minute talk was given by Lou Hawthorne of NaNotics LLC.  In his talk, Hawthorne described the NaNot, a bio-technique that I had not previously encountered and that he had invented.  Essentially, the NaNot is a tiny sponge-like sphere that traps specific pathogenic molecules in a chemically active area in its interior and removes them from the bloodstream.

    Most of the participants of this Forum are familiar with the work of the Conboy Group at Berkeley, which has demonstrated that the dilution of human blood plasma with saline solution plus albumin provides significant health benefits, i.e., limited rejuvenation, to aging animals and humans.  These benefits are attributed to the removal of some fraction (perhaps 50%) of the load of certain pathogenic molecules from the bloodstream by diluting them away.  The NaNot seems to offer the promise of providing the rough equivalent of Conboy plasma dilution, but with a simple injection rather than an hour-long blood-processing procedure, and doing so in a more targeted way that removes a larger fraction (~95%) of the pathogenic molecules.  The Nanot remains active in the bloodstream for a few hours.  It is eventually removed by being engulfed by a macrophage and broken down into its chemical components, with the residue released harmlessly back into the bloodstream.

    The NaNot has a layered construction: a structural core, an active chemical layer selected to bind with and trap a specific targeted soluble pathogenic molecule, a layer permeable to the pathogen, and a “stealth” outer layer that renders it non-toxic to the immune system.  Each pathogen to be targeted would require a different NaNot designed to absorb it.  This specificity, of course, requires that we understand which pathogenic chemical is to be removed.  The company has so far focused on eight inflammatory and eight inhibitory cytokines as targets.  They have a list of 14 inflammatory diseases and 19 inhibitory diseases (all forms of cancer) that their technique can treat.   So far, two of the NaNot types have reached the pre-clinical stage while the other six are in earlier stages of development.

    The FDA has rendered a non-binding preliminary ruling that the NaNot is a drug.  This means that expensive and time-consuming  trials are needed.  The NaNot timeline indicates it will take some time, at best 2026-2028, before the technique can be available to the likes of us.  In the meantime, Conboy plasma dilution is available (at some expense) right now.