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nanotimes News in Brief

11-02/03 :: February / March 2011

Emory postdoctoral fellow Sudhir Pai Kasturi, PhD, created tiny particles studded with molecules that turn on Toll-like receptors. He worked with col- league Niren Murthy, PhD, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

“We are very excited about building on this plat- form to design improved vaccines for existing and emerging infectious diseases” says Kasturi, the prima- ry author, working in Pulendran’s lab at the Emory Vaccine Center. One of the particles’ components is MPL (monophosphoryl lipid A), a component of bacterial cell walls, and the other is imiquimod, a chemical that mimics the effects of viral RNA. kThe particles are made of PLGA–poly(lactic acid)-co- (glycolic acid)–a synthetic polymer used for biodegra- dable grafts and sutures.

All three components are FDA-approved for hu- man use individually. For several decades, the only FDA-approved vaccine additive was alum, until a cervical cancer vaccine containing MPL was appro- ved in 2009. Because of immune system differences between mice and monkeys, the scientists replaced imiquimod with the related chemical resiquimod for monkey experiments.

In mice, the particles can stimulate production of an- tibodies to proteins from flu virus or anthrax bacteria

several orders of magnitude more effectively than alum, the authors found. In addition, the immune cells persist in lymph nodes for at least 18 months, almost the lifetime of a mouse. In experiments with monkeys, nanoparticles with viral protein could induce robust responses greater than five times the response induced by a dose of the same viral protein given by itself, without the nanoparticles.

Sudhir Pai Kasturi, Ioanna Skountzou, Randy A. Albrecht, Dimitrios Koutsonanos, Tang Hua, Helder I. Nakaya, Ra- jesh Ravindran, Shelley Stewart, Munir Alam, Marcin Kwis- sa, Francois Villinger, Niren Murthy, John Steel, Joshy Jacob, Robert J. Hogan, Adolfo García-Sastre, Richard Compans, Bali Pulendran: Programming the magnitude and persi- stence of antibody responses with innate immunity, In: Nature, 2011; Vol. 470(2011), No. 7335, February 24, 2011, Pages 543-547, DOI:10.1038/nature09737: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09737

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