British scientists develop synthetic vaccine

Scientists in the UK claim that they have developed a way of creating an entirely synthetic vaccine that does not rely on using a live infectious virus, making it a lot safer.



The prototype vaccine that they have created was initially made for creating a vaccine for foot and mouth disease, and has now been engineered in order to make it more stable.



The new synthetic vaccine is not only safer, but also does not require any refrigeration, and can be kept out of the cold for many hours before it returns to the cold chain, making it a huge breakthrough in overcoming the problems associated with administering vaccines in the developing world, where refrigeration is often not possible.



The findings, discovered by a team made up of scientists from the University of Oxford, University of Reading, the Pirbright Institute, and the UK's national synchrotron facility, the Diamond Light Source near Oxford, were published in the journal PLOS pathogens.



The Diamond Light Source in particular played a key role in the research.



Working as a particle accelerator, it sends electrons all the way around a huge magnetic ring at speeds close to that of light.



"Unlike traditional vaccines, there is no chance that the empty shell vaccine could revert to an infectious form," said Dave Stuart, Life Sciences director at Diamond, and MRC Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford.



"This work will have a broad and enduring impact on vaccine development, and the technology should be transferable to other viruses from the same family, such as poliovirus and hand-foot-and-mouth disease, a human virus which is currently endemic in south-east Asia."



Viruses are often very unstable and fragile, but diseases like those studied by the team of researchers can be examined by using x-ray crystallography.



The protein shells of the virus can then be analysed at an atomic level, something that is a billion times smaller than a pinhead.



Much like any vaccine, the main aim is to try and prompt the immune system into recognising the outer shell and destroy the pathogen before it has time to lock onto cells and infect them with its genetic material.



Written by Angela Newbury



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