Breathe in, exhale . That’s how easy it’s for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to enter your nose. And though remarkable progress has been made in developing intramuscular vaccines against SARS-CoV- 2, like the readily available Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, nothing yet – sort of a nasal vaccine – has been approved to supply mucosal immunity within the nose, the primary barrier against the virus before it travels right down to the lungs.
But now, we’re one step closer.
Navin Varadarajan, University of Houston M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and his colleagues, are reporting in iScience the event of an intranasal subunit vaccine that gives durable local immunity against inhaled pathogens.
“Mucosal vaccination can stimulate both systemic and mucosal immunity and has the advantage of being a non-invasive procedure suitable for immunization of huge populations,” said Varadarajan. “However, mucosal vaccination has been hampered by the shortage of efficient delivery of the antigen and therefore the need for appropriate adjuvants which will stimulate a strong immune reaction without toxicity.”
To solve those problems, Varadarajan collaborated with Xinli Liu, professor of pharmaceutics at the UH College of Pharmacy, and an expert in nanoparticle delivery. Liu’s team was ready to encapsulate the agonist of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) within liposomal particles to yield the adjuvant named NanoSTING. The function of the adjuvant is to market the body’s immune reaction .
“NanoSTING features a small particle size around 100 nanometers which exhibits significantly different physical and chemical properties to the traditional adjuvant,” said Liu.
“We used NanoSTING because the adjuvant for intranasal vaccination and single-cell RNA-sequencing to verify the nasal-associated lymphatic tissue as an inductive site upon vaccination. Our results show that the candidate vaccine formulation is safe, produces rapid immune responses – within seven days – and elicits comprehensive immunity against SARS-CoV-2,” said Varadarajan.
A fundamental limitation of intramuscular vaccines is that they’re not designed to elicit mucosal immunity. As prior work with other respiratory pathogens like influenza has shown, sterilizing immunity to virus re-infection requires adaptive immune responses within the tract and therefore the lung.
The nasal vaccine also will serve to equitably distribute vaccines worldwide, consistent with the researchers. it’s estimated that first world countries have already secured and vaccinated multiple intramuscular doses for every citizen while billions of individuals in countries like India, South Africa , and Brazil with large outbreaks are currently unimmunized. These outbreaks and viral spread are known to facilitate viral evolution resulting in decreased efficacy of all vaccines.
“Equitable distribution requires vaccines that are stable which are often shipped easily. As we’ve shown, each of our components, the protein (lyophilized) and therefore the adjuvant (NanoSTING) are stable for over 11 months and may be stored and shipped without the necessity for freezing,” said Varadarajan.
Varadarajan is co-founder of AuraVax Therapeutics Inc., a pioneering biotech company developing novel intranasal vaccines and therapies to assist patients defeat debilitating diseases, including COVID-19. the corporate has an exclusive license agreement with UH with reference to the property covering intranasal vaccines and STING agonist technologies. they need initiated the manufacturing process and decide to engage the FDA later this year.
Varadarajan explained that equitable distribution requires vaccines that are stable which are often shipped easily.
“As we’ve shown, each of our components, the protein (lyophilized) and therefore the adjuvant (NanoSTING) are stable for over 11 months and may be stored and shipped without the necessity for freezing,” he added within the statement.
Varadarajan is co-founder of AuraVax Therapeutics Inc., a pioneering biotech company developing novel intranasal vaccines and therapies to assist patients defeat debilitating diseases, including COVID-19.
The company has an exclusive license agreement with UH with reference to the property covering intranasal vaccines and STING agonist technologies.
They have initiated the manufacturing process and decide to engage the FDA later this year.
Xingyue An, Melisa Martinez-Paniagua, Ali Rezvan, Samiur Rahman Sefat, Mohsen Fathi, Shailbala Singh, Sujit Biswas, Melissa Pourpak, Cassian Yee, Xinli Liu, Navin Varadarajan,
Single-dose intranasal vaccination elicits systemic and mucosal immunity against SARS-CoV-2,
iScience, 2021. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103037
Source link: https://www.ophthalmologytimes.com/
