Imran Saleem
Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Title: Inhalation of a nanocarrier vaccine against pneumococcal disease
Biography
Biography: Imran Saleem
Abstract
There is a huge drive in the vaccine research field and pharmaceutical industry for effective targeting of Antigen Presenting Cells APCs) to enhance the immune response and for needle-free vaccination. The aim of this study was to adsorb Pneumococcal Antigen (PA), onto in house developed polymer-based nanoparticles (NPs) to target lung APCs. Further to formulate these NPs into dry powder nanocomposite microparticles (NCMPs) suitable for pulmonary vaccine delivery. NPs were prepared using an emulsion solvent evaporation method and PA was adsorbed onto the surface of NPs (100:20). The NPs were spray-dried in an aqueous suspension of leucine to produce NCMPs and characterised in terms of particle size, loading, cell viability, protein stability (SDS-PAGE), antigenicity (ELISA), immunization and aerosolisation studies. The NPs produced were 322.83±4.25 nm in size with PA loading 19.68±2.74 μg/mg. The NCMPs resulted in a fine particle fraction (FPF%) >75%. The NPs appear to be well tolerated by APCs cell lines ≥90% cell viability) at 19.5μg/mL after 4h exposure. SDS-PAGE and the antigenicity (>95%) confirmed that PA was stable in both formulations after spray-drying. The cfu in BALF of mice challenged with pneumococcal bacteria was signifcantly less compared to PA alone in the lungs or via subcutaneous injection.