Vaccine experts tend to be a serious bunch, but many are downright giddy about vaccine clinical trial results presented last week at a medical conference in Seattle.
The actual vaccine isn’t new — it’s the one used to protect against measles and rubella (German measles) and was formulated decades ago. But new results show that the novel delivery system, in development for more than two decades, could be a big step forward, especially for low-income countries.
There’s no syringe involved. Rather, there’s a small adhesive patch — think Band-Aid — containing tiny microarray “needles” made from the vaccine in dry form, says Steve Damon, CEO of Micron Biomedical, which has been working on the patch for about six years.
The patch is a white plastic disk about the size of a quarter. When it’s gently pressed onto the patient’s wrist, within just a few minutes, the tiny needles deliver the vaccine dose.
The patch can be administered by a lay person with minimal training, says Damon: “The vaccine is pushed into the skin with your thumb or finger to provide the same dose as an injection would but without the involvement of a needle and syringe.” Damon says the microneedles penetrate just the outer layer of the skin above the pain receptors, so there is hardly any discomfort. (James Goodson, senior scientist and epidemiologist in the Global Immunization Division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and co-investigator for the study, likens the feeling to Velcro on skin.)
The clinical trial, conducted in The Gambia, was the first to test both the efficacy and safety of the vaccine patch. It included 45 adults, 120 toddlers (15-18 months old) and 120 infants (9-10 months old) who received the measles-rubella vaccine either by the microarray device or by a conventional injection. A month and a half after vaccination, the researchers assessed the immune responses of the trial participants. There were similarly robust responses for both vaccination methods….
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply