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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The first dry powder inhalable vaccine for measles is moving toward clinical trials next year in India, where the disease still sickens millions of infants and children and kills almost 200,000 annually, according to a new report.
Robert Sievers, Ph.D., who leads the team that developed the dry-powder vaccine noted that it is a perfect fit for use in back-roads areas of developing countries, which often lack clean water, sterile needles and the electricity for refrigeration that are all needed to administer traditional liquid vaccines.
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"Childhood vaccines that can be inhaled and delivered directly to mucosal surfaces have the potential to offer significant advantages over injection," Sievers was quoted as saying. "Not only might they reduce the risk of infection from HIV, hepatitis, and other serious diseases due to unsterilized needles, they may prove more effective against disease."
Although intended for developing countries, the technology eventually could form the basis for a new generation of inhalable vaccines in the United States and elsewhere. So far, an inhalable vaccine is available for only one disease -- a wet mist vaccine for influenza.
Sievers, once an atmospheric scientist who now is at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, University of Colorado, Boulder, took inspiration for the new vaccine from research on how people inhale tiny airborne droplets of air pollutants.
To create an inhalable vaccine, Sievers and his team developed a patented process known as the "Carbon Dioxide-Assisted Nebulization with a Bubble Dryer," called CAN-BD. The weakened measles virus is mixed with "supercritical" carbon dioxide part gas, part liquid to produce microscopic bubbles and droplets, which then are dried to make an inhalable powder. The powder is puffed into a small, cylindrical, plastic sack with a narrow opening at the neck. "By taking one deep breath from the sack, a child could be effectively vaccinated," Sievers said.
In animal tests, the inhaler has been just as effective in delivering measles vaccine as the traditional injection, the researchers say. They now are working on an inexpensive dry powder inhaler that would deliver measles or influenza vaccines that would replace injections. The new method also would help reach those who refuse inoculations because of their fear of needles. The researchers say that the vaccine could be produced for about 26 cents a dose. If the inhaler passes final safety and effectiveness tests, the Serum Institute of India Ltd. expects a demand growing to 400 million doses of measles vaccine a year, according to Sievers.
"Human clinical trials are expected to begin next year in India, after animal safety studies are completed this year," Sievers said. "About two-thirds of the world's deaths due to measles occur in that nation. Worldwide, several hundred people die every day from measles-related disease."
During a measles outbreak in the 1980s in Mexico, 3 million children received a measles vaccine by inhaling a wet mist aerosol. Those who took part in the test had a lower rate of developing measles than those who received a vaccine by injection. "The problem with that method," said Sievers, "was that the wet mists required power or batteries to generate the aerosol, and the liquid vaccines had to be freshly made up and kept on ice, and the nebulizer that delivers the dose had to be cleaned. The new, inexpensive dry aerosol dispenser doesn't need to be cleaned and doesn't require power."
SOURCE: Presented at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Washington, D.C., August 16, 2009
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