Developing room-temperature RNA-based vaccines

Researchers in the Departments of Materials and Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London are developing nanostructured surfaces for packaging applications.

Our collaborators in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London have developed small artificial spheres (liposomes) containing RNA-based vaccines, which are stable and can be stored at room temperature. The issue with these liposomes is they attract each other in solution and cannot be absorbed by the body when too many sticks together. So a new collaboration aims to develop an array of nanoholes to keep these liposomes separate on a surface until we release them for use as a vaccine.

This exciting work aims to remove the need worldwide for cold transport and storage for RNA-based vaccines.