Keynote, Zero hunger (SDG 2), Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3)
Vaccines without refrigeration
Asel Sartbaeva University of Bath / EnsiliTech, United Kingdom
Vaccines are effective and safe, saving millions of lives worldwide. But, unfortunately, most vaccines are not stable at room temperatures; they degrade over time and lose their potency outside refrigerators, the so-called “cold chain”: 2-8C. Cold chain costs more than vaccines in some areas of the world and problems with cold chain can lead to vaccines spoiling, leading to a lack of vaccination in many countries. This in turn leads to vulnerable people not receiving life-saving vaccination. Many, most-commonly used vaccines, such as DTP (against diphtheria tetanus pertussis), MMR (against measles mumps rubella), BSG (against tuberculosis) have been used for decades, they are safe and prevent millions of people catching life-threatening diseases, but, their cold chain dependence is the weakest link in the vaccination programs, which makes them sometimes inaccessible in some low-income countries. In this talk, I will describe a new method, ensilication, that we think can free vaccines from cold chain dependence. We know that viruses, protein complexes, viral particles denature by protein unfolding aggregation. In our method we prevent this unfolding by applying a special coating on individual proteins or viruses, to encase the proteins, which prevents their physical unfolding and thus denaturation. To-date, we have ensilicated more than 15 different biopharmaceutical products, including vaccines, antibodies, enzymes and proteins, paving a way for refrigeration-free biologicals. In this talk, I will present the in vitro and in vivo results showing that immunogenicity is preserved after storage and physical transport of vaccines using ensilication and without refrigeration, focusing on vaccines against tetanus and tuberculosis.
© The Author(s), 2023
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog