In the opening segment of NBC’s Dec. 12 “Saturday Night Live” (view here), a spoof character of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks a faux medical expert Dr. Deborah Birx about the need to keep the COVID vaccines stored at -70°F. “How will you keep the doses cold?” The faux Dr. Birx responds, “Luckily the vaccine comes in Coors Light Cold Activated Cans! When the mountains turn blue, you know the vaccine is effective.”
In the real world, Coors Light packages don’t carry the vaccine, but the brand’s innovation work to develop cold-activated mountains on cans helped CTI develop new technology to protect today’s critical medical supply chain by identifying IF the vaccines thawed prematurely.
Coors Light’s cold-activated mountain uses a thermochromic ink technology developed by Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI), Colorado Springs, CO, to be applied to aluminum cans at high speeds and survive heat of 400°F. This chemistry turned out to be the cornerstone for CTI to develop thaw and warming alerts that can be printed on every COVID-19 vaccine vial. This helps identify and prevent a dose ruined by heat from being injected into a patient and failing to provide immunity protection.
CTI developed BlindSpotz™ printable sensors for pharmaceuticals that activate alerts if vials and injectables have been damaged by freezing (such as flu shots), thawing, warming and tampering. Multiple pharma companies are now testing CTI’s technology.
“CTI has spent the past 11 years improving the Coors Light cold-activated mountains and using that knowledge to develop new chemistries that can be tuned to identify temperature change between -20°C. and 80°C.,” said Lyle Small, CTI’s founder. “The critical problem facing healthcare workers and patients is: How do they look at a drug prior to injection and know if it’s safe or if it has been damaged by heat or freezing? We eliminate that risk,” Small added.
Drinking Coors Light is still about enjoying the chill and cold refreshment of the beer. But every can you drink helps with the research and development of protecting transport and storage of the COVID vaccines and other drugs. We can all toast to that!
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