Scientists Develop $25 Nasal Spray That Is 99% Effective Against Colds, Flu and COVID-19

Scientists at Harvard Medical School have developed a simple nasal spray, made of harmless ingredients, that can protect people against flu, colds and COVID-19 with near-100 percent success, and it costs just $25.

The new spray is called the Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray, or PCANS, though they are marketing it under the name Profi.Its ingredients are pectin, gellan, polysorbate 80, benzalkonium chloride and phenethyl alcohol, all of which were drawn from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) inactive-ingredients database and “generally recognized as safe” list. “We performed rigorous screening of ingredients that have been used in approved nasal formulations or have been widely recognized for their safety, and identified combinations and concentrations that maximize effectiveness and safety,” says Nitin Joshi, PhD, an assistant professor at Harvard.

According to the researchers, the spray “coats the nasal cavity, capturing large respiratory droplets from the air and serving as a physical barrier against a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, while rapidly neutralizing them with over 99.99 percent effectiveness.” In other words, it catches the viruses and bacteria at the typical point of entry into the body — the nose — and stops them there.

In the study, mice were exposed to a severe flu virus. All of the mice who were given the new spray survived. Among mice who were not given the spray, none survived. 

The researchers used a 3D-printed replica of a human nose to test the nasal spray’s efficacy. ”In … research in our labs, the nasal spray reduced the load of viruses and bacteria — including Influenza A and B, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, adenovirus and a bacterial form of pneumonia — by over 99.99 percent and persisted in the nose for eight hours,” says Jeffrey Karp, PhD, distinguished chair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT in Boston.

However, these results came from a study involving mice, not people, and the study was conducted in a laboratory, not the outside world. In addition, the spray has not gone through the process of getting regulated as a medical treatment by FDA. The researchers decided against getting FDA approval due to the cumbersome federal regulatory structure, which can take years, to market the spray as a medical product. Instead they are selling it as a personal-care product. “Because of the nature of the ingredients … we do not need clinical trials (and we don’t make any medical claims — as this is regulated as a personal care product/cosmetic),” they say. This means that even though research published in a peer-reviewed journal points toward 99.99 percent effectiveness, they can’t make these claims in their marketing materials.