Influenza viruses (influenza viruses for short) are regarded as a key public health issue. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, as many as 1 billion people around the world are infected with seasonal influenza every year, and at least 3 million of these patients develop influenza. The disease is severe and causes about 500,000 deaths every year. The medical industry has invested tens of billions of dollars in manpower and material resources in influenza virus epidemic investigation, drug and vaccine manufacturing, etc. Taiwan gradually enters the flu season every year in October. Vaccination is the best prevention method. However, due to the high variability of influenza viruses and the lack of cross-protective effects of the vaccines currently on the market, pharmaceutical companies must target the flu every year. Vaccines are re-created against the virus strains predicted to be prevalent by the World Health Organization, and people must be re-vaccinated every year. This is a major dilemma in influenza prevention.
Chen Hui-wen, a professor at the Department of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University, and Hu Che-ming, a teacher at the Institute of Biomedicine at Academia Sinica, formed an interdisciplinary research team to develop thin-shell polymer nanoparticles as virus vaccine carriers. Such carriers can effectively enter lymph nodes and be targeted by follicular dendritic cells. Captured and slowly and sustainably released antigens, this research and development result won the 17th National Innovation Award-Academic Research Innovation Group in 2020 for the “Novel Nano Vaccine for Preventing Coronavirus”, and has successively won the Republic of China , Japanese and EU patents, and also have technology transfer results. At the same time, the research team continues to improve its core technology, extend this vaccine manufacturing process to influenza viruses that affect the Chinese people and the world, and develop a broadly effective influenza vaccine. The research team used influenza virus M2 protein short peptide as the antigen, combined with a powerful adjuvant (STING agonist), and nano-shell vaccine technology as the delivery carrier, to induce high amounts and long-lasting antibodies, and these antibodies can exert Mediating cytotoxicity and eliminating virus-infected cells, this vaccine has been proven in mouse animal experiments to achieve 100% protection against three different subtypes of influenza viruses, and only requires one dose.
In addition, in the product manufacturing process, the team has now broken through the original low-temperature storage conditions of -80 degrees Celsius for nano-vaccines, and has been able to successfully freeze-dry the vaccine and store it at room temperature. Its efficacy will still be exactly the same after at least one month after re-dissolution. The nano-vaccine was actually air-expressed in freeze-dried form to a collaborating laboratory in Texas, USA, for use. It was found that the vaccine could still maintain its original efficacy after being redissolved, which is a big step forward for the practical application of the product. This research result was published in the cross-disciplinary high-impact journal Advanced Science (5-yr IF=16.7) in June this year. The first author of the paper is Dr. Cai Xiaohan. This paper won the “Yongxin Li Tiande Medical Technology-Outstanding Paper Award” , the team has also filed a new patent application and plans to implement it for commercialization as soon as possible.
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2023-11-01 11:04:29
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