A UK vaccine technology that is set to revolutionise the industry has received £950k funding from the Department for International Development (DFID) to bring to production a pentavalent childhood vaccine that can be stored without refrigeration.
The award was made today by the Rt Hon Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development at The Royal Society of Medicine, London.
The new ‘stable liquid’ technology, developed by Cambridge Biostability Limited (CBL), will enable vaccines to be stored for long periods in a range of environmental conditions, removing the need for refrigeration and reconstitution. Currently 50 per cent of all vaccines are wasted partly due to suspected or real temperature damage.
The new technology also offers the potential of slow release vaccines, which may overcome the need for boosters. In addition, thermostable vaccines do not require reconstitution, which is a major cause of vaccine safety and wastage problems.
The World Health Organisation estimates the cost of vaccinating a child at approximately $30 . The cold chain is a major burden to vaccine programmes with an estimated cost of $200-300m per annum. Savings from removing the ‘cold chain’ alone would enable the vaccination of an additional 10 million children worldwide within existing budgets.
In collaboration with CBL, the vaccine is to be manufactured by Panacea Biotec, based in New Delhi, rated as India’s second largest biotechnology company.
The stable vaccines will enable children in remote areas of the world to be reached by vaccination programmes. It will also allow emergency response teams to store vaccines in readiness for outbreaks of disease, and business travellers and the military to carry vaccines with them.
The Rt Hon Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development, comments:
“The good health we take for granted in the UK is due in great part to our vaccination programme. The widespread and effective use of vaccines has protected children in the UK against diseases such as measles, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria and given parents piece of mind. We want to make this a reality for children and their parents in the developing world.
Two million children die each year from preventable diseases. This new British technology, funded by DFID, allows vaccines to be used in remote areas and at extreme temperatures and will mean more children than ever before will have access to life-saving vaccinations.”
Martin Friede, World Health Organisation, was asked to evaluate the applicability of the new stable-liquid technology on behalf of DFID he comments:
“The World Health Organisation recognises the need for developing thermostable vaccines that do not require a cold chain for storage or reconstitution, and promotes the research and development of technological solutions to achieve this objective. WHO would like to see continued research of such technologies to render them broadly applicable.”
Thermostable Vaccine Technology
The new technology is based on a natural phenomenon where some plants and creatures can remain in a desiccated state for hundreds of years and then return to life. They do this by increasing the sugar content of their bodily fluids. When rehydrated they ‘return to life’.
Cambridge Biostability’s stable liquid vaccine technology uses a similar process. Embedded in sugar beads or microspheres and suspended in an inert liquid, the vaccines can be stored without refrigeration until needed. When injected, in the same way as a traditional vaccine, the sugar beads dissolve in the bodily fluids to release the vaccine.
Sugar beads also prevent the interaction of vaccines prior to injection therefore, multiple or multivalent vaccines can be developed using this technology and given in the same shot. The sugar can also be adapted to dissolve more slowly, thereby releasing vaccines over time. This would remove the need for boosters.
The technology has been developed in Cambridge UK by Dr Bruce Roser, who comments that all the components are currently in use in medicine and that the stable liquid vaccines meet the requirements for WHO and PATH.