Building capacity for citizen science communication of water quality risks: Exploring the enhancement of the communication infrastructure in Letcher County, Kentucky.

In the coal mining regions of Eastern Kentucky, access to potable water has been diminished due to industrial pollution and aging infrastructure. Current communications regarding contaminated water are often too inaccessible and too infrequent to appropriately address the issues in target communities. To explore possible improvements to the community's communication infrastructure, the researchers explored what types of stories should be used to communicate about water quality risks, who should communicate about these stories, and how these stories should be communicated. Researchers enlisted a key community member to conduct 24 individual interviews with community members, using snowball sampling. Open and axial coding was used to conduct a constant comparative analysis of the data for emergent themes. Analyzing the verbatim interviews, the researchers concluded communication infrastructure should be enhanced to engage the public about water quality risks. Risk messaging should share water quality information through stories that are designed to be easily digested and frequently distributed using laypeople's terms, visuals, graphs, and maps. These stories should be shared using an integrated communication infrastructure where key community storytellers, such as local news, social media, and interstitial agents, work together to share risk information across platforms and channels.

Purification of cell culture-derived influenza A virus via continuous anion exchange chromatography on monoliths.

The continuously increasing demand for potent and safe vaccines and the intensifying economic pressure on health care systems underlines the need for further optimization of vaccine manufacturing. Here, we focus on downstream processing of human influenza vaccines, investigating the purification of serum-free cell culture-derived influenza virus (A/PR/8/34 H1N1) using continuous chromatography. Therefore, quaternary amine anion exchange monoliths (CIM® QA) were characterized for their capacity to capture virus particles from animal cells cultivated in different media and their ability to separate virions from contaminating host cell proteins and DNA. The continuous chromatography was implemented as simulated moving bed chromatography (SMB) in a three zone open loop configuration with a detached high salt zone for regeneration. SMBs exploiting 10% and 50% of the monoliths' dynamic binding capacity, respectively, allowed the depletion of >98% of the DNA and >52% of the total protein. Based on the hemagglutination assay (HA assay), the virus yield was higher at 10% capacity use (89% vs. 45%). Both SMB separations resulted in a ratio of total protein to hemagglutinin antigen (based on single radial diffusion assay, SRID assay) below the required levels for manufacturing of human vaccines (less than 100µg of protein per virus strain per dose). The level of contaminating DNA was five-times lower for the 10% loading, but still exceeded the required limit for human vaccines. A subsequent Benzonase® treatment step, however, reduced the DNA contamination below 10ng per dose. Coupled to continuous cultivations for virus propagation, the establishment of integrated processes for fully continuous production of vaccines seems to be feasible.