An Oral Zika Vaccine

Oral delivery of low cost viral Zika vaccine antigens which generate authentic humoral responses. The ability to deliver a vaccine orally in a reliable manner has several obvious advantages. However, barriers exist which limit this route of administration. Two of the main barriers include the highly acidic environment in the stomach and the hold time of products entering the stomach (up to 5 hours) during which time the temperature is a constant 37°C. Technology to apply enteric coatings to substances to ameliorate the acidic challenge have been available for a considerable time, however the ability to overcome the thermal barrier has been not been available until now and represents a significant technical formulation challenge limiting the broader use of the orally administered viral vectored vaccines. Stabilitech has a novel stabilisation platform which protects fragile vaccines and biologics not only during processing and storage, but also as recently demonstrated when administered to subjects orally. We propose to build upon our pilot data in which we have used adenovirus 5 delivery to the duodenum for expression of green fluorescent protein which in addition demostrated an antibody response to the GFP but no neutralising responses to adenovirus. The proposed series of investigations will undertake experimental studies to develop a novel Zika virus vaccine which would be administerable via oral tablets. This vaccine would have multiple additional benefits due to its inherent thermal stability which would impact on the whole supply chain and relieving the pressure on product supplies, healthcare providers and importantly would be very amenable to developing countries due in part to the cost savings generated from the ease of administration, production, transport and storage.