What is it about?
Many proteins in vaccines are stable only between 2 and 8 degrees. This means that they have to be refrigerated all the way from when they are made to administration to patients. This is a very big burden on transport and storage of vaccines, because if there is no electricity or infrastructure, vaccines spoil and we do not vaccinate vulnerable people. This leads to millions of deaths around the globe from vaccine-preventable diseases. In our manuscript, we describe a new method of using silica to make vaccines thermally stable at room temperatures without refrigeration. This is a first step in delivering live-saving vaccines and saving millions of lives around the world.
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Why is it important?
It will save millions of lives, it will save millions of pounds from waste of vaccines, it will save the environment, as we will need to produce less vaccines and will be able to store them for longer, we will waste less vaccines too.
Perspectives
I got interested in this project because of having my own children. After the birth of my first daughter, I took her to be vaccinated and saw that the vaccines were taken out of the fridge and administered immediately. This awakened my scientific curiosity - why do they spoil, how do they spoil and can I use my favourite material - silica - to prevent the vaccine degradation? Those are the questions I asked and am still trying to answer. I know now why and how they spoil - the proteins in vaccines unfold and tangle up. Once unfolded, they can not fold back. I have also found that I can use silica to make some proteins thermally stable at room temperatures. So, now I need to continue applying this method to more proteins and vaccines, to see how many we will able to transport and store without refrigeration in the future.
Dr Asel Sartbaeva
University of Bath
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Thermal stability, storage and release of proteins with tailored fit in silica, Scientific Reports, April 2017, Nature,
DOI: 10.1038/srep46568.
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