A PATCH THAT DELIVERS VACCINES, NO NEEDLES NECESSARY
Vaccines save lives, but most of them are delivered by needle. That’s a problem for people without access to refrigerated solution, clean syringes, and safe ways to dispose of medical waste. Biomedical engineer Kasia Sawicka invented a painless alternative: a patch, called ImmunoMatrix, that can vaccinate patients without breaking the skin.This technology can affect how vaccines are delivered, especially during pandemics.
Needle and syringe vaccines are typically administered into the muscle which has relatively few immune cells. Over the last 30 years or so, immunologists have discovered that skin is crammed full of immune cells, making it a far more effective place to apply vaccines.You could argue that the skin is our immune sweet spot.
The skin doesn’t absorb large molecules easily, which meant Sawicka had to find another way to get vaccines across that barrier. As an undergraduate at Stony Brook University, she worked in a lab that stocked an extremely water-absorbent material called poly-vinylpyrrolidone. She found that this polymer (used in hairspray during the era of beehive hairdos) could pull water out of the skin. When moisture returned, the outer layer of the skin swelled, allowing larger-than-usual molecules to enter.
Over several years, Sawicka perfected a process that involves combining the polymer with vaccine solution, forming it into nano-fibers with large surface areas, and weaving those fibers into dense mats. In tests on rats and synthetic human skin, the patches delivered vaccine molecules 250 times larger than those the skin typically absorbs. No prick necessary.
Needle and syringe vaccines need to be chilled throughout their life-cycle to prevent temperature damage that can render them ineffective or potentially harmful. This cold chain process is costly and makes it difficult to distribute vaccines to many parts of the world. The coating formulations used to coat the Nano patches provides the vaccine with ambient temperature stability that eliminates the need for the cold chain, saving money and simplifying global distribution.
Another significant development in needle free immunization is a dry-spray technology developed by Harvard School of Public Health Dean Barry R. Bloom and two bio engineers at Harvard, David Edwards and doctoral student Yun-Ling Wong. Prepared by spray drying, a technology used to make powdered milk and other food products, their innovation is a dry-powder preparation of the live attenuated anti-tuberculosis vaccine, bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) that can be delivered by aerosol through the mouth or nose to the lungs. BCG is the most widely used vaccine in the world, given annually to more than 100 million children.
Needle and syringe vaccines are typically administered into the muscle which has relatively few immune cells. Over the last 30 years or so, immunologists have discovered that skin is crammed full of immune cells, making it a far more effective place to apply vaccines.You could argue that the skin is our immune sweet spot.
The skin doesn’t absorb large molecules easily, which meant Sawicka had to find another way to get vaccines across that barrier. As an undergraduate at Stony Brook University, she worked in a lab that stocked an extremely water-absorbent material called poly-vinylpyrrolidone. She found that this polymer (used in hairspray during the era of beehive hairdos) could pull water out of the skin. When moisture returned, the outer layer of the skin swelled, allowing larger-than-usual molecules to enter.
Over several years, Sawicka perfected a process that involves combining the polymer with vaccine solution, forming it into nano-fibers with large surface areas, and weaving those fibers into dense mats. In tests on rats and synthetic human skin, the patches delivered vaccine molecules 250 times larger than those the skin typically absorbs. No prick necessary.
Needle and syringe vaccines need to be chilled throughout their life-cycle to prevent temperature damage that can render them ineffective or potentially harmful. This cold chain process is costly and makes it difficult to distribute vaccines to many parts of the world. The coating formulations used to coat the Nano patches provides the vaccine with ambient temperature stability that eliminates the need for the cold chain, saving money and simplifying global distribution.
Another significant development in needle free immunization is a dry-spray technology developed by Harvard School of Public Health Dean Barry R. Bloom and two bio engineers at Harvard, David Edwards and doctoral student Yun-Ling Wong. Prepared by spray drying, a technology used to make powdered milk and other food products, their innovation is a dry-powder preparation of the live attenuated anti-tuberculosis vaccine, bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) that can be delivered by aerosol through the mouth or nose to the lungs. BCG is the most widely used vaccine in the world, given annually to more than 100 million children.
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