Biodegradable Bioadherent Microcapsules for Orally Administered Sustained Release Vaccines

Traditional parenternal vaccines have many limitations which pose problems for both military and civilian vaccination programs. Parenternal vaccines must be administered by trained medical personnel, booster doses are generally required to obtain maximum protection, they are usually only effective against a single organizm and most require refrigeration. Biodegradable, bioadherent microencapsulated (BBM) vaccines for oral administration would overcome many of these limitations. The proposed work utulizes recombinant Fasciola hepatica eggshell proteins to form antigen containing microcapsules which will be used as an orally administered vaccine. The recombinant Fasciola hepatica eggshell proteins were selected as microcapsule constituents specifically because of their natural biodegradable and bioadherent characteristics. The BBM orally administered vaccine would prodide long term single dose disease protection without trained medical personnel administration. Further, several different organisms could be encapsulated separately but administered at the same time ia and outer capsule which contained the BBM antigens. In Phae I, the goal is to prepare a BBM tetanus vaccine for oral administration and compare its efficacy with that of a parenternally administered commercial tetanus vaccine. In Phase II, porositu and the degree of bioadherence of the microcapsules will be fine-tuned, and animal studied will be extended to include preclinical trials.