Room-Temperature Vaccines Pass First Human Trial
A British company and the National Institute for Health and Care Research have tested vaccines stored as dry powder at room temperature for a year in 60 volunteers. Stablepharma converted a liquid tetanus-diphtheria vaccine into powder form, kept it at room temperature for 12 months, then mixed it with water before injection. The technology draws on resurrection plants, which survive drought by producing a stabilising sugar called trehalose. Around half of all vaccines are wasted each year because they get too hot or too cold. Most vaccines require refrigeration or freezing from manufacture until injection, a practice called the cold chain that proves difficult in poor countries, remote areas, and war zones where fridges are scarce and electricity unreliable.
The approach could cut vaccine waste and expand access in places without reliable cold storage.
Source: Half of vaccines are binned - this plant could change that (bbc.com). Spotted via Good News Network.
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