A Thermostable, Single Dose Vaccine for Pandemic Preparedness

Viruses adapt and evolve by natural selection of antigenic variants that emerge through immunological pressure, point mutations and gene recombination. To stay ahead of pandemic threats, Versatope improves diverse strain protection by designing vaccine candidates using bioinformatics and structural biology and then displaying representative epitopes on the surface of nano-sized membrane vesicles derived from probiotic bacteria. Although these nano-vesicles are potent immune response stimulators and provide protection against diverse pathogens, genetic engineering and strain selection is required to render them safe for clinical use in people. Key Learnings Self-adjuvanting nanovesicles are thermostable and can be co-formulated for single dose administration and long-term immunity. The nanovesicles are also bioavailable for diverse routes of administration. The utility of exosomes and recombinant bacterial vesicles are becoming increasingly popular due to the tuneability to address diseases of diverse sorts.