Wibowo Nani, Chuan Yap P, Seth Arjun, Cordoba Yoann, Lua Linda H L, Middelberg Anton P J
The University of Queensland, Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
The University of Queensland, Protein Expression Facility, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Vaccine. 2014 Jun 17;32(29):3664-9. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.04.043. Epub 2014 Apr 29.
Nanotechnology promises a revolution in medicine including through new vaccine approaches. The use of nanoparticles in vaccination has, to date, focused on attaching antigen directly to or within nanoparticle structures to enhance antigen uptake by immune cells. Here we question whether antigen incorporation with the nanoparticle is actually necessary to boost vaccine effectiveness. We show that the immunogenicity of a sub-unit protein antigen was significantly boosted by formulation with silica nanoparticles even without specific conjugation of antigen to the nanoparticle. We further show that this effect was observed only for virus-sized nanoparticles (50 nm) but not for larger (1,000 nm) particles, demonstrating a pronounced effect of nanoparticle size. This non-attachment approach has potential to radically simplify the development and application of nanoparticle-based formulations, leading to safer and simpler nanoparticle applications in vaccine development.
纳米技术有望给医学带来一场革命，包括通过新的疫苗研发方法。迄今为止，纳米颗粒在疫苗接种中的应用主要集中在将抗原直接附着于纳米颗粒结构上或包裹在纳米颗粒结构内，以增强免疫细胞对抗原的摄取。在此，我们质疑抗原与纳米颗粒结合对于提高疫苗效力是否真的必要。我们发现，即使抗原未与二氧化硅纳米颗粒进行特异性偶联，通过与二氧化硅纳米颗粒制剂混合，亚单位蛋白抗原的免疫原性也会显著增强。我们进一步表明，这种效应仅在病毒大小的纳米颗粒（50纳米）中观察到，而在较大的（1000纳米）颗粒中未观察到，这表明纳米颗粒大小具有显著影响。这种非附着方法有可能从根本上简化基于纳米颗粒制剂的开发和应用，从而在疫苗研发中实现更安全、更简便的纳米颗粒应用。
