Speaker
Description
Globally, there is an urgent need to develop effective vaccine technologies to address the ever-increasing problems of emerging, multi-drug-resistant pathogens. Identifying vaccine development technologies that are rapid, cost effective, environmentally friendly, and able to impart broad-spectrum protection, and lasting immunity is a great challenge. Ionizing radiation is a versatile technology that has demonstrated encouraging outcomes in development of whole-cell inactivated vaccines that are metabolically active but replication-deficient. Damage to genetic material (DNA/RNA) both directly and indirectly renders the pathogen inactive and safe. The irradiated cells are effective in inducing an effective immune response and providing protection owing to intact structural proteins and other antigenic epitopes on their cell surface. Conventionally, radio vaccines are developed using legacy nuclear technologies based on radioactive isotopes such as Cobalt-60 which requires stringent safeguarding and disposal requirements making it commercial unsustainable. Transitioning to environment friendly and sustainable alternative radio vaccine technology such as machine source-based electron beam (eBeam) technology can be an effective solution. Current study focusses on comparatively evaluating inactivation kinetics of target vaccine candidates, antigenicity and in vitro efficacy of eBeam radio vaccines to Co-60 based vaccines. The key vaccine candidates are Human rotavirus, Influenza A virus, Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus, Acinetobacter baumannii, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Listeria monocytogenes. Our previous studies using HEEB and Salmonella sp. have shown demonstrated antigenic properties in eBeam inactivated cells stimulating innate pro-inflammatory response and maturation of Dendritic cells. The eBeam irradiated cells also retained stable immunogenic properties over longer period at wider storage temperatures ranging from -20⁰C to room temperature indicative of their sustainability. Comparative studies such as these will demonstrate the availability of vaccine technologies to replace cobalt-60 based isotope technologies.
