Remote-controlled hydrogel depots for time-scheduled vaccination

05.06.2013

Gübeli RJ, Hövermann D, Seitz H, Rebmann B, Schoenmakers RG, Ehrbar M, Charpin-El Hamri G, Daoud-El Baba M, Werner M, Müller M, Weber W

Adv. Funct. Mater. 2013;23(43):5355–5362

Adv Funct Mater.           online article

Vaccination represents a highly efficacious and efficient strategy to reduce worldwide morbidity and mortality saving millions of lives per year. However, most vaccination regimes require multiple injections inherently associated with a risk of infection as well as with the requirement of medical personnel, both affecting mainly developing countries.
We present a novel vaccine depot that is triggered to release its cargo and to induce protective immunity by the simple intake of an orally available small molecule thus replacing repeated injections by oral medication. To this aim, we designed a depot exclusively synthesized from compounds routinely used in human therapy. We demonstrated the time-controlled release of the vaccine in mice by the oral administration of the small-molecule stimulus finally resulting in successful immunoprotection.
In the future, the smart depot developed for this simplified vaccination strategy might be used as a universal remote-controlled vehicle for the patient-compliant delivery of vaccines and pharmaceuticals.