ORT-VAC: live bacterial vectors for vaccine delivery

我们的目标是通过开发一种创新的口服疫苗递送技术来彻底改变疫苗接种。传统疫苗需要大量和昂贵的生产、纯化、配方和储存，并使用针头给药。我们将设计活的肠道ORT-VAC细菌，使其携带表达抗原的质粒。这些独特的基因能够维持稳定的、高拷贝数的质粒，而不会产生抗生素耐药性或其他可选择的标记基因，使它们特别适合于提供流感和艾滋病毒的DNA疫苗，这些疫苗也将由该联盟开发。将优化封装技术，使细菌能够在环境温度下储存，摄入并释放到小肠中，在那里它们将刺激保护性免疫反应。因此，ORT-VAC代表了一种具有内置稳定性、佐剂性和有效性的经济高效的平台技术。

We aim to revolutionise vaccination by developing an innovative oral vaccine delivery technology. Traditional vaccines require extensive and costly production, purification, formulation and storage, with needles used for administration. We will engineer live enteric ORT-VAC bacteria to carry plasmids expressing antigens. These uniquely enable stable, high-copy number plasmid maintenance without antibiotic resistance or other selectable marker genes, making them particularly suited for delivering DNA vaccines against influenza and HIV, which will also be developed by the consortium. Encapsulation technology will be optimised to enable the bacteria to be stored at ambient temperature, ingested and released into the small intestine, where they will stimulate a protective immune response. ORT-VAC therefore represents a cost-effective platform technology with built-in stability, adjuvanticity and efficacy.