Alternative Route

Many pathogens, including viruses like HIV, influenza and SARS-Cov-2, first invade our bodies through mucosal surfaces, lining our respiratory or urinogenital tracts. Strong immune responses there would help resist infection, so administering vaccines at relevant entry points, such as the nose, should be beneficial. Yet intranasal vaccines have had limited success, struggling to get past protective mucosal barriers. Researchers may have found a solution, by combining antigens, the active ingredients of vaccines, with a lipid tail that binds to albumin, a protein that naturally crosses mucosal membranes. Tests using antigens against SARS-Cov-2 or HIV, in both mice and rhesus macaques, found strong immune responses after intranasal vaccination with these complexes, known as amph-proteins (pictured, in red, in the nasal passages of a mouse). Antibodies were found in both nasal tissues and blood serum, suggesting local and general immunity, encouraging results that could pave the way for new approaches to vaccination.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image from work by Brittany L. Hartwell and colleagues

Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image copyright held by the original authors

Research published in Science Translational Medicine, July 2022

Two selfies by a survivor of the deadly Gorongoso bus crash of November 19, 2018

The Nagi Investiments coach was travelling from Quelimane to Beira, on the Mozambican coast, when, while descending towards the bridge over the Mucosa river near the village of Gorongoso, it went off the road and turned over killing three, including a two-year-old child and its mother, and injuring 37.

The driver, Amisse Mussa, said a mechanical fault made it impossible to control the vehicle as it went downhill. However, passengers blamed the driver for driving too fast and ignoring repeated requests to slow down.

The Gorongosa administrator coincidentally passed the bus travelling in the opposite direction shortly before the accident and reported that it was traveling at high speed then, too.

mucosa and random star eyed girl