A new type of vaccine vehicle—this one literally has a teeny tiny motor—can drive itself to the mucosal linings of mouse intestines, potentially allowing for broader protection against infection, according to a study last week in Nano Letters.
Nanoengineers Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang at the University of California, San Diego, teamed up to design an ingestible device that can navigate the digestive system of rodents, stick itself to the mucosal lining of the gut, and deliver its payload. Aside from obviating the need for shots, the team says, the motorized vaccine may have another crucial benefit: its ability to build mucosal immunity.
Mucosal immunity is our body’s “first line of defense,” says David Lo, a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied vaccines and mucosal immunity. “Yet, there are almost no vaccines that we have on the market that actually try to induce this kind ...
