Scientists at Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have created a three-dimensionally (3D)-printed vaccine patch that provides greater protection than a typical vaccine shot. The ease and effectiveness of a vaccine patch sets the course for a new way to deliver vaccines that is painless, less invasive than a shot with a needle and can be self-administered.
The City of Hope team, in conjunction with Menzies Health Institute Queensland at Griffith University, packaged a protein-based anti-HIV drug into “nanosized” cell fragments called exosomes. When the researchers treated mouse models of HIV with the drug, it tamped down HIV levels in the brain as well as in the bone marrow and spleen, they reported in Nature Communications.