Evaluation of merocyanine 540-sensitized photoirradiation as a means to inactivate enveloped viruses in blood products.

Dry or wet heat, solvents, and detergents combined with ultraviolet irradiation provide effective means of sterilizing soluble blood products such as albumin or factor VIII. For obvious reasons, these procedures are not applicable to cellular blood components. We have recently shown that simultaneous exposure to the photosensitizer, merocyanine 540 (MC 540) and white light rapidly inactivates the Friend erythroleukemia virus complex and Friend virus-transformed cells, but causes relatively little damage to pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells. In this communication, we show that several lipid-enveloped human pathogenic viruses are also highly susceptible to MC 540-sensitized photoirradiation, and we report on an initial evaluation of the ability of MC 540-sensitized photoirradiation to sterilize blood products.