Neurolytic pathogen

A neurolytic pathogen was a highly destructive infectious agent, especially in respect to cybernetic organisms such as the Borg.

In 2378, Captain Janeway's counterpart from twenty-six years in the future deliberately infected herself with a neurolytic pathogen and subsequently allowed herself to be assimilated by the Borg Queen as part of a plan to destroy the Borg's transwarp network. As the pathogen began to take effect, the Queen lost contact with the majority of the Collective, and the shielding protecting the interspatial manifolds supporting the network, which the Queen regulated personally, began to destabilize. This allowed the crew of the USS Voyager to fire a series of transphasic torpedoes, destroying the manifolds and causing the network to collapse. As the pathogen continued to affect the Queen, her cybernetic limbs fell off and the Unicomplex was destroyed. Before she died, the Queen said Sphere 634 could still hear her thoughts and had assimilated the pathogen. (VOY: "Endgame")

In 2384, the USS Protostar encountered a Borg cube that had been rendered dormant by the neurolytic pathogen. The cube and the drones aboard began to reactivate after Zero accessed the cube's vinculum. (PRO: "Let Sleeping Borg Lie")

In 2401, the Borg Queen revealed to Jean-Luc Picard that the Borg Collective had been decimated by the pathogen, bringing the Borg to the very edge of destruction. By this time, the Collective had been reduced to a handful of drones and was forced to rely on subterfuge and an alliance with a vengeful rogue group of Changelings to replenish the army of drones, leading to the Queen prioritizing evolution, propagation through subterfuge and the annihilation of all other lifeforms in the galaxy rather than simply relying on forced assimilation. The damage caused by the pathogen gave the USS Enterprise-D the chance to finally destroy the Borg for good. (PIC: "The Last Generation")

See also[]

• Nanoprobe virus
• Icheb, a carrier of a similar pathogen