Rapid Method to Quantify the Antiviral Potential of Porous and Nonporous Material Using the Enveloped Bacteriophage Phi6

The pandemic revealed significant
gaps in our understanding of
the antiviral potential of porous textiles used for personal protective
equipment and nonporous touch surfaces. What is the fate of a microbe
when it encounters an abiotic surface? How can we change the microenvironment
of materials to improve antimicrobial properties? Filling these gaps
requires increasing data generation throughput. A method to accomplish
this leverages the use of the enveloped bacteriophage ϕ6, an
adjustable spacing multichannel pipette, and the statistical design
opportunities inherent in the ordered array of the 24-well culture
plate format, resulting in a semi-automated small drop assay. For
100 mm2 nonporous coupons of Cu and Zn, the reduction in
ϕ6 infectivity fits first-order kinetics, resulting in half-lives
(T50) of 4.2 ± 0.1 and 29.4 ±
1.6 min, respectively. In contrast, exposure to stainless steel has
no significant effect on infectivity. For porous textiles, differences
associated with composition, color, and surface treatment of samples
are detected within 5 min of exposure. Half-lives for differently
dyed Zn-containing fabrics from commercially available masks ranged
from 2.1 ± 0.05 to 9.4 ± 0.2 min. A path toward full automation
and the application of machine learning techniques to guide combinatorial
material engineering is presented.