Of the 150-plus coronavirus vaccines in development around the world, the lion’s share will rely on a needle prick to make their way into the body.
Many microbes, including the coronavirus, enter the body through the mucosa — wet, squishy tissues that line the nose, mouth, lungs and digestive tract — triggering a unique immune response from cells and molecules there. Intramuscular vaccines generally do a poor job of eliciting this mucosal response and must instead rely on immune cells mobilized from elsewhere in the body flocking to the site of infection.
The hope is that mucosal vaccines will do all that their intramuscular competitors can and more, mounting a multipronged attack on the coronavirus from the moment it tries to breach the body’s barriers, said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. These mucosal immune responses seem to underlie the success of the oral polio vaccine, which contains a weakened form of polio virus and has helped most of the world eradicate polio. When it debuted in the 1960s, the vaccine was considered, in many ways, an enormous improvement over its injected predecessor because it targeted the body’s immune response in the gut, where the virus thrives.
Still, relying on that strategy alone can be risky — a bit like shoring up a bank’s security at every entrance except for the one a thief would most likely hit. Sentinels roving throughout the building could subdue the interloper after they trip the alarm. But by that point, some damage has probably already been done.
Reliably rousing mucosal immunity isn’t easy, however — and vaccines that specifically target them come with their own drawbacks. Although FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine containing weakened flu viruses, has been shown to be more effective than flu shots in young children, its performance is more lackluster in adults. And the oral polio vaccine has been linked to a very small number of cases of polio after the weakened virus in the product mutated.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: MSNBC - 🏆 469. / 51 Read more »
Source: Reuters - 🏆 2. / 97 Read more »
Source: TheCut - 🏆 720. / 51 Read more »
Source: TMZ - 🏆 379. / 59 Read more »
Source: NBCNewsHealth - 🏆 707. / 51 Read more »
Source: YahooNews - 🏆 380. / 59 Read more »