Breath-fresh strips inspire new platform for vaccines

摘要

In liquid form, life-saving agents such as vaccines can be notoriously unstable, often requiring refrigeration or other support systems to preserve them long enough to reach patients in need. International aid missions can easily be foiled by simple power outages ruining a batch of just such fragile medicine. Researchers at McMaster University have developed a platform to overcome this problem, taking their inspiration from the chemistry of a consumer product: breath-freshening strips that melt on your tongue. The key ingredient in these strips is pullulan, a polysaccharide that becomes impermeable to oxygen after it dries. By casting enzymes and other substrates within this material, they can be preserved in a form that will remain inert until it interacts with water. "The process is very much like making gelatin," says Carlos Filipe, a McMaster chemical engineering professor who was a principal investigator in this work.