Needle-free vaccination technology has the potential to revolutionise immunisation and make it available to everyone, everywhere, a new report has shown.
Micron Biomedical revealed earlier this week that a measles and rubella vaccination patch has passed a Phase 1/2 clinical trial. These are fascinating findings that demonstrate, for the first time, the ability of vaccine patches to safely and effectively administer immunisations to children.
This is especially crucial in the case of measles and rubella, because high vaccine coverage is required internationally to avoid measles outbreaks, and coverage has declined dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vaccine microarray patches (vaccine-MAPs), also known as microneedle patches, are minute projections that are put to the body like a small bandage to deliver a vaccine by gently penetrating the skin’s outermost layer.
Vaccine-MAPs are expected to be easier to deploy than traditional vaccines, making them well-suited to delivery in hard-to-reach settings or for rapid deployment of protective vaccines in future epidemics or pandemics.
Gavi and its partners, WHO, UNICEF, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Path, CEPI and the US Department of Defence and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority are calling for investments to fund pilot-scale manufacturing facilities and late-stage clinical trials to accelerate its availability.
Dr. Derrick Sim, Managing Director, Vaccine Markets & Health Security at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, commented: “Vaccine patches have the potential to transform immunisation, especially in lower income countries where health infrastructure is less well developed. With these very encouraging clinical trial results, now is the perfect time for us all to step in and set us on a pathway for introducing this technology platform for measles and rubella, and a range of epidemic and endemic vaccines in the future.”
