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"<p>Scientists at England&rsquo;s Oxford University have found a way of  keeping vaccines stable without refrigeration, BBC News reported Feb. 19.</p><br /><p>Writing in Science Translational Medicine, they say the  breakthrough could significantly help efforts to immunize more children in rural  Africa.</p><br /><p>The need to keep vaccines cool &mdash; to stop them deteriorating &mdash;  is often difficult in developing countries where refrigerators, clinics and  electricity cannot be taken for granted.</p><br /><p>Writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the  scientists describe how they managed to keep vaccines stable for four to six  months at 113 degrees Fahrenheit. </p><br /><p>They also found the vaccines could be kept for a year or more  at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit with only tiny losses of vaccine.</p><br /><p>Their work was published Feb. 17.</p><br /><p>The researchers mixed two different virus-based vaccines with  two types of sugar before slowly drying them on a filter paper. They used  sucrose and trehalose, which is known for its preservative properties.</p><br /><p>This preserved the vaccine doses, which were then easily  rehydrated when needed for injection.</p><br /><p>Under the World Health Organization's immunization program,  nearly 80 percent of children are vaccinated against six killer diseases &mdash;  polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, whooping cough, measles and tetanus.</p><br /><p>But one of the biggest costs of that program is maintaining the  so-called &quot;cold chain&quot; &mdash; ensuring vaccines are refrigerated all the way from the  manufacturer to the child, whether in a developed nation or a remote village in  Africa.</p><br /><p>The WHO estimates that maintaining the cold chain costs up to  $200 million a year in developed countries, increasing the cost of vaccination  by as much as 20 percent.</p><br /><p>&quot;Currently vaccines need to be stored in a fridge or freezer,&quot;  said Matt Cottingham of Oxford's Jenner Institute, who led the study. &quot;You need  a clinic with a nurse, a fridge and an electricity supply, and refrigeration  lorries [vehicles] for distribution.&quot;</p><br /><p>Several teams of scientists around the world are working on  ways to try to overcome the problem.</p><br /><p>&quot;If you could ship vaccines at normal temperatures, you would  greatly reduce cost and hugely improve access to vaccines. Without the need for  refrigeration, you could even picture someone with a backpack taking vaccine  doses on a bike into remote villages.&quot;</p><br /><p>The work, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and  the Wellcome Trust, involved a collaboration between the university scientists  and Nova Bio-Pharma Technologies.</p><br /><p>In a commentary about the study, Professor Adrian Hill, said:  &quot;If we could convert all the standard vaccines to a solution like this, it would  mean they're cheaper to deliver, because they'd survive at room temperature &mdash;  and so there'd be scope to vaccinate more children.</p><br /><p>&quot;The technology is simple and extremely cheap &mdash; and there are  no more scientific hurdles to overcome.</p><br /><p>&quot;Our tests were pretty tough as we used live viruses. So we  feel that having stabilized those more fragile vaccines, this method should work  for other vaccines containing dead protein.</p><br /><p>&quot;It's now just a matter of developing the technique, trying it  out in Africa and seeing if it can be made on an industrial basis. This could  happen within five years.&quot;</p>"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://vaccinenewsdaily.com/stories/510530754-fridge-free-vaccine-hopes-raised>