Browsing by Author "Bottega, Paolo"

Vaccines have proven to be one of the most effective methods of mitigating the effects of infectious diseases. One of the most prominent hurdles facing widespread vaccine delivery is the cost and added time attributed to cold chain logistics. That is that vaccines need to be kept constantly below a certain temperature to retain their effectiveness, which in many cases is as low as -80°C. Application of specific biopolymers is one method of enhancing vaccine thermostability, diminishing the need for such cold chains by preservation at lower temperatures. This enhanced vaccine formulation is achieved through a technique known as microencapsulation, in which an active agent, in this case the vaccine, is protected through storage in a thin film of polymeric material. This preserves vaccine efficacy until later use and release from the protective film upon vaccine delivery. In the following study, a naturally derived biopolymer was investigated for its cryopreserving properties with the aim of exceeding the current benchmark of preservation at ambient temperature for 72 hours. This involved evaluation of the formulation, referred to as our designed technology (DT) across different stress parameters (4°C, 22°C and 37°C) for differing periods of time, applicability to different vaccine systems (adenovirus, envelope virus and mRNA based) and finally efficacy in both in vitro and in vivo settings. The results demonstrate that adenovirus based vaccines are able to withstand the physical, pH and temperature alterations of diverse stress tests when protected by biopolymer microencapsulation both in vitro and in vivo. This suggests that microencapsulation with the naturally derived biopolymer is a strong method of preserving adenovirus vaccine stability at temperatures up to 37°C for up to three weeks. As such, naturally derived biopolymer microencapsulation stands to drastically reduce the cost of vaccines by mitigating the need for cold chain logistics through preservation at temperatures up to 37°C.