SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Forty-eight million people suffer from foodborne illnesses every year and 3000 people die.While the human cost is immense and tragic the cost to food companies can be equally steep.The average cost of a recall for food processors can be as much as $10 million in direct costsand even worse result in 50% drop in sales for the first year.Some food processing companieshave been completely wiped out.The current sanitation protocols namely daily applications ofshort-lived disinfectants are clearly insufficient for today's complex food processingenvironment.Self-sanitizing coatings i.e. antimicrobial surfaces are an ideal theoreticalsolution for eliminating persistent pathogens; however there has been no commercially availableantimicrobial material which can fulfill all requirements of high-efficacy against pathogens: easyto apply broad material compatibility no pathogen resistance development and cost-effective.That makes HaloFilmâ„¢ a breakthrough product.HaloFilm is a spray-on product that when driedleaves a thin transparent film on a surface.The film is a polymer composed of one monomer tostick to the surface and another monomer that stabilizes chlorine i.e. N-halamine.HaloFilmturns the surface into a chlorine battery so using a chlorinated cleaning product will leave asurface covered with chlorine which can last days.HaloFilm essentially a chlorine extenderrelies on the efficacy of chlorine which has decades of use and broad-spectrum efficacy againstpathogen without generating pathogens with resistance.The value proposition for HaloFilm in this context is clear.There are two major scenarios whereHaloFilm can be of benefit: (1) errant pathogens and incomplete cleaning procedures that don'tkill all pathogens have a lower likelihood of resulting in tainted food products and (2) biofilmswhich are the bane of food processing plants have less of a chance to talk hold from the start.At the same time a formulation with zwitterion moieties in the polymer backbone may enhancethe cleaning effort by reducing the likelihood of organic matter to stick to surfaces.Building on the successful results from our Phase I effort we will pursue three objectives withthis Phase II.First we will perform additional product development to sufficiently characterizethe base formulation of HaloFilm and a formulation that includes additional elements in thepolymeric backbone that might contribute to a reduced need for cleaning.Secondly we willperform product performance studies to validate the anti-protein and anti-microbial function ofHaloFilm on real food machine with controlled inoculation regimes.Thirdly we will assess themanufacturing efforts and perform limited scale-up efforts to validate our manufacturingapproach. The results of these efforts should demonstrated HaloFilm's features performance andutility.HaloFilm is Halomine Inc.'s first product and is protected by exclusively licensed patents fromAuburn University and Cornell University.Our business model is to make and sell HaloFilmwith revenue coming from sales of product.We believe the market for disinfectants related tofood safety is likely between $600 and $800 million with several times that spent on the activityand believe we have a total available market of over $100 million. There are six initial targetapplications that encompass about 3000 out of the 27000 food manufacturing firms: frozenfood frozen desserts seafood pet food cheese and breakfast cereal.
