Long-Term Vaccine Storage Inspired by Anhydrobiotic Organisms

Innovation: Industry

Nova Laboratories

2010

Image: Scott Webb / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Maintain Homeostasis

When a living system is in homeostasis, it means that internal conditions are stable and relatively constant. For example, a human’s internal temperature is approximately 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) unless there’s an illness. The human body maintains this temperature despite external ambient temperature. However, as with all physiological processes, maintaining homeostasis requires communication and coordination. So living systems have ways to detect changes from the norm, mechanisms to cause an adjustment, and negative feedback connections between the two. A desert lizard called the Gila monster offers a good example of maintaining homeostasis. The lizard goes from eating large meals to fasting for extended time periods. To maintain its blood sugar levels at a steady level, when food is scarce, its endocrine system releases a hormone that raises its blood sugar levels.

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Protect From Loss of Liquids

Water is essential to life. Liquids, mostly water, make up 70 to 90% of all living systems, and the loss of even a small percentage can mean the difference between life and death. Living systems must maintain a proper liquid balance, which is especially difficult in dry conditions. To do so, they must control the movement of liquids across their boundaries. Living systems do this using structures or waterproof materials to prevent or slow liquid movement. For example, when humans receive a cut, they must limit blood loss. Scattered throughout the bloodstream are lens-shaped structures that serve to plug the wound.

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Protect From Temperature

Many living systems function best within specific temperature ranges. Temperatures higher or lower than that range can negatively impact a living system’s physiological or chemical processes, and damage its exterior or interior. Living systems must manage high or low temperatures using minimal energy, which often requires controlling responses along incremental temperature changes. To do so, living systems use a variety of strategies, such as avoiding high or low temperatures, removing excess heat, and holding heat in. Insulation is a well-known example of managing low temperatures by retaining heat using thick layers of hair, fur, or feathers to hold warm air next to the skin.

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Patents

VitRIS and HydRIS from Nova Laboratories use sugar-glass stabilization to improve long-term vaccine storage.

Benefits

Long-term storage
Reduced cost

Applications

Biological samples
Vaccines

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 3: Good Health & Wellbeing

The Challenge

Biological samples are often stored in a freezer, which makes them vulnerable to equipment malfunction and oftentimes leads to sample degradation over time. In addition, shipping of frozen samples requires dry ice, which is costly and uses excessive materials.

Innovation Details

The vaccine is first spray-dried using sugar syrup to form microscopic glass spheres (VitRIS™ technology). This was inspired by the process anhydrobiotic organisms use to protect themselves during suspended animation. The dry vaccine is then suspended in an inert liquid, which can be injected into muscle where bodily fluids reactivate the vaccine (HydRIS® technology). Since the stable liquid formulations are anhydrous, they are inherently bacteriostatic, as bacteria require water to multiply. Thus the need for antiseptics is eliminated. 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 and eliminating the need for boosters.

Biological Model

Anhydrobiosis is the process by which organisms such as brine shrimp and tardigrades become almost completely dehydrated, losing up to 95% of their free and stored water and entering a state of suspended animation. They can survive in this state for several decades. To enter this state, the organism creates different proteins and sugars that help protect its cells. They do this by replacing the water with a sugar solution that thickens to a point of solidifying as a glass. Once the organism takes up water again from its surroundings it can re-activate its cells and come back to life.

See Related Strategy

Biological Strategy

Cryptobiosis Protects From Extremes

Water bears

The waterbear survives extreme environmental conditions by entering a reversibly suspended metabolic state known as cryptobiosis.

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