Vaccine Breakthrough: Enhanced Mucosal Delivery to Improve Immune Protection
Vaccine Breakthrough: Enhanced Mucosal Delivery to Improve Immune Protection
Collections: Image Award Winners
Brittany Hartwell, Jason Y.H. Chang, Darrell J. Irvine
Koch Institute at MIT
The Irvine Lab is developing an intranasal vaccine that can bypass multiple barriers in the nasal cavity (seen here in cross-section) to activate a ‘frontline’ defense of immune cells and antibodies in the mucosa that protect against mucosally-transmitted pathogens.
Evading clearance and degradation by mucus, the vaccine (yellow) is taken up by epithelial cells (indigo) lining the nose. It uses a naturally-occurring protein called albumin as a chaperone to hitchhike across mucosal cell layers (magenta) into underlying immune tissues. Further testing shows that the vaccine elicits protective immune responses against intruders such as HIV and SARS-CoV-2.
This work was published in Science Translational Medicine in July 2022.
Video
Brittany Hartwell shares the story behind her award-winning image.