Summary
Using BigDNA's patented phage vaccination technology, a DNA vaccine is delivered in a specially modified bacteriophage particle. The phage coat protects the vaccine DNA from degradation and allows the hosts immune system to process it more efficiently. The phage particles used are non-infectious and only grow on specialised lab strains of bacteria - in essence they are used as a self-assembling protein coat for the vaccine material.

Advantages

Phage vaccines are more efficient at raising immune responses than standard DNA vaccines. They also have several potential advantages over both traditional vaccines and DNA vaccines.

The growth medium and conditions used to produce phages are inexpensive and completely free of animal-derived material. Vaccine phages are therefore relatively cheap and easy to produce.

Each phage vaccine is physically identical, therefore manufacturing processes can be standardized.

Because of the way phage vaccines deliver the vaccine to the host, there is the possibility of creating therapeutic vaccines or vaccine against cancer.

Every individual phage particle infecting a bacteria can produce 100-150 new progeny phage in 30-40 mins, therefore huge numbers of phage can be produced very rapidly. New vaccines could be produced in response to specific outbreaks.

Bacteriophage lambda is stable over a wide range of temperatures. Vaccines can therefore be transported with little refrigeration to where they are needed.

The stability of phage lambda means that phage vaccines can potentially be delivered orally, so there is the potential of delivering vaccines in a pill or in foodstuff.

Although phages are biologically distinct from human viruses and cannot infect mammals, their physical structure is similar, so the immune system is fooled into thinking they are a threat and immune responses to the vaccine component are increased.

Multiple vaccine genes can be contained in the same phage, so multiple vaccines can be delivered simultaneously using the phage approach.

Bacteriophages are usually between 20 and 200 nanometres (billionths of a metre) and consist of a protein coat surrounding the genetic material, which can be either DNA or RNA. Their genome size is from around 20 to 500 thousand bases, compared to 3 billion for the human genome or 4.6 million for an E. coli bacterium.