A measles vaccine made of fine dry powder and delivered with a puff of air triggered no adverse side effects in early human testing and it is likely effective, according to a paper to be published November 28 in the journal Vaccine. The paper is now available online.
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In 2013, measles killed 145,700 people, most of them children, according to the World Health Organization. That’s despite the fact that the conventional injectable vaccine against the measles virus is effective.
“Delivering vaccines in the conventional way, with needle injections, poses some serious challenges, especially in resource-poor parts of the world,” said Robert Sievers, co-author of the new paper, a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and also a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
His team innovated a dry delivery technique for the measles vaccine to eliminate the need for injections, liquid storage, and other challenges, such as vaccine contamination. “You don’t need to worry about needles; you don’t need to worry about reconstituting vaccines with clean water; you don’t need to worry about disposal of sharps waste or other vaccine wastage issues; and dry delivery is cheaper,” Sievers said.
Read the complete University of Colorado news release HERE
