BME-developed polymer ‘wafers’ could deliver vaccines of the future

May 26, 2021 — A team of researchers, led by BME Associate Professor Chun Wang, have developed a polymer “wafer” that, when placed under the tongue, can effectively deliver and preserve protein-based vaccines for diseases. The research could open the door for vaccines that can be more easily produced and distributed to communities around the world. 

The study is published in the Journal of Controlled Releasea biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal.

“People have been struggling with creating an HIV vaccine for many years, and one of the problems is how to deliver it,” said Chun Wang, corresponding author of the study and a biomedical engineering associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering. “So the challenge becomes, can we take a large molecule like a protein, store it at room temperature, give it through the sublingual site, avoid the pain and hassle with needles, have it be absorbed, and actually generate an immune response? And it turns out that we have demonstrated it actually can work with a rather simple but elegant material platform.”

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