Vaccines
Advances in the field of vaccines and their administration have provided significant benefits to public health, eradicating diseases, preventing epidemics, and reducing deaths from infectious diseases. In a similar context, advances in formulating those vaccines in a more convenient and comfortable form are enabling the development of various novel formulations with safety and efficacy of those vaccines as the cornerstone of such developments.
Parenteral administration of vaccines by needle and syringe has low acceptability by children and infants, in addition to a high risk of infection due to the inappropriate reuse of these materials worldwide.
Vaccine administration can be done via oral, nasal, pulmonary, rectal, vaginal, ocular, sublingual, or transcutaneous routes. However, at NiedlFree, the focus has been particularly on oral and nasal vaccinations, which can induce stronger mucosal immune responses.
Oral delivery
Oral vaccines have several advantages over conventional injectable route of administration: Comfort, Convenience and Compliance besides ease of large-scale production, and induction of immunity in the intestinal mucosa blocking disease transmission and increasing herd immunity. Oral vaccination is associated with increased adherence, lower occurrence of adverse reactions, and potential for self-administration, which make them attractive for mass vaccination campaigns.
Oral administration is the most used route since the intestinal epithelium has a high absorption capacity due to its extensive surface area (around 300 to 400 m2). In addition, another important characteristic is the presence of lymphoid tissue, also known as gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). The tissue contains inductive sites where immune responses begin, in addition to effector sites where adaptive immune responses are made. Studies have indicated that antibody-secreting cells in the intestinal mucosa can persist for decades, then plasma cells provide long-lasting mucosal immunity. In some, oral immunization may easily activate cytotoxic T lymphocytes and long-acting mucosal memory immunoglobulins A when compared to systemic immunization.
The development of oral vaccine would include an understanding of the physical-chemical aspects of the barriers within the GI tract such as low pH of the gastric region, presence of bile salts and digestive enzymes in the intestinal portion, and peristaltic movement etc.
At NiedlFree, the technology incorporates overcoming all such barriers and successfully and effectively formulating different vaccine candidates, be it protein or peptide based or viral based vaccines.