A team of scientists from different universities across Europe has developed an innovative method of delivering vaccines directly to the white blood cells in order to boost the immune system against life-threatening diseases. They have devised a tough microcapsule using synthetic spider silk that can deliver vaccines directly to T-cells.

This research work was led by Prof. Carole Bourquin, a specialist in cancer immunotherapy from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. She said, "To develop immunotherapeutic drugs effective against cancer, it is essential to generate a significant response of T lymphocytes. As the current vaccines have only limited action on T cells, it is crucial to develop other vaccination procedures to overcome this issue."

Thomas Scheibel, the co-author cum expert on spider silk from the University of Bayreuth in Germany said, "We recreated this special silk in the lab to insert a peptide with vaccine properties; The resulting protein chains are then salted out to form injectable microparticles; The peptide encapsulated by these microparticles was thus delivered directly to the heart of the lymph node cells, boosting the immune response of T cells.”

Synthetic spider silk biopolymers were used since they are resistant to high temperatures of around 100°C so that it can be stored easily. Hence the vaccine delivery would be easier without the need of any adjuvants. Further research would proceed in order to check whether larger antigens can be incorporated in the microcapsules.