| Traditional vaccination is performed by injections, which is painful, causes stress, especially in children and requires trained personnel. Vaccination via the skin provides effective, easy-to-use, painless, and needle-free vaccination with fewer side effects and safer handling. It has the potential to dramatically improve current vaccination practice in developing countries and in cases of mass vaccination campaigns. The main challenge is to delivery antigen molecules across the skin barrier in proper formulations in sufficient amounts. The aim of the work described in this thesis was to improve the efficiency of transcutaneous vaccination (vaccine application on intact or pretreated skin) by using microneedle arrays, adjuvants, and antigen-containing vesicle formulations. In this study, we observed that transcutaneous immunization of mice with cholera toxin-adjuvanted diphtheria vaccine on microneedle array-treated skin can induce comparable immune protection as subcutaneous injection with alum-adsorbed vaccine. Transcutaneous immunization with influenza vaccine can also be improved significantly by co-administration of adjuvants. |
