Combining several routes of vaccine administration results in a better immune response, depending on the results of a study published in the medical journal Scientific Reports. This discovery offers new perspectives for “personalized” vaccination allowing the immune response to be adapted to infection.
Today, vaccination is practiced mainly by intramuscular or subcutaneous route. Research questions the benefits of the so-called transcutaneous route, through the skin, which is still in clinical trials. Little used as an injection site, because it requires significant technical expertise, it has the benefits of using low doses and of being done without a needle, via the deposit of the vaccine in the duct of the hair follicles.
Inserm researchers at the Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases (CIMI-Paris, Inserm / Pierre and Marie Curie University / CNRS) are trying to develop new vaccines, in particular against HIV. Among other things, they are studying the quality of immune responses as a function of the different routes of vaccine administration, including the transcutaneous route.
They formed three groups of subjects:
-the first group of patients was vaccinated by combining an intramuscular and intradermal injection,
-the 2nd was administered a vaccine combining an intramuscular and a transcutaneous,
– finally, the 3rd group received an IM injection administered with electroporation, “a technique used in microbiology aimed at making a cell membrane more permeable, in this case to the DNA present in the vaccine, by applying an electric field to it. ‘a millisecond,’ recalls the researchers.
Transcutaneous injection for better immunity
The findings of the study showed that participants who received the intramuscular injection coupled with electroporation, develop the strongest immune response by producing a lot of interferons (cytokines secreted by the immune system) compared to other groups. If this immune response is strong, it is not of sufficient quality. In contrast, volunteers who received a transcutaneous injection displayed an immune response producing a variety of cytokines revealing a better quality of the immune response.
These findings open up new perspectives for the search for differential cellular immunity, necessary to combat the wide range of Infectious diseases and tumors. By combining several routes of administration, one obtains the best, more specific immune response which could adapt to any infection.
“These results are encouraging because they help advance research on DNA vaccines, especially for HIV. The next step will be to determine whether this vaccine approach can modify the immune responses of individuals infected with HIV, ”conclude the researchers who carried out the study.
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