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Vaccines: Stabilization against Heat Enzymes as Vaccine Analogs | 
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One of the major problems with immunizing people around the world against certain diseases is that some of these people live in very remote places. That poses the problem of how to get the vaccines to them - especially those vaccines that rapidly deteriorate in heat and thus require refrigeration during their trips up those remote jungle rivers for several days. Sensitivity to heat is a problem in the developed countries, too. Merely maintaining stockpiles of the vaccines requires large refrigerated facilities, which must run fail-safe for years so that the vaccines will be ready when the next epidemic shows signs of raising its head.
Thus, wouldn't it be better to find some ways to stabilize those "heat-labile" vaccines so that bulky refrigeration would not be needed? Perhaps a small bag would hold the supply needed to vaccinate a whole village.
Of course, in order to test whether or not your stabilization method works, the vaccine must be tested to see if it still produces the desired immunity. But students are not allowed to go around sticking people with needles to test their products! Besides, it is a very fast way to lose friends!
But here is something that you can do: instead of working with vaccines and people, work with analogs - substances which have the same chemical properties as vaccines do. Thus if you can make your method work with the analog, then "big-time" labs and companies will go through the proper channels to test if your method works on their vaccines. If it does, then you have made an important step in saving lives. Supposedly, Jonas Salk of Salk polio vaccine fame once said: "If you want to save lives, invent a new vaccine and save lives by the millions!"
Of what might these vaccine analogs consist? The easy answer: enzymes! You already may be aware of some stabilized enzymes: Lactaid®, Beano!®, and meat tenderizer. So you know that the task is not impossible, and that should give you hope of success.
As this is a very advanced project, you must have some access to procure enzymes for use as your "tools." Companies such as Sigma Chemical Co are reputable, but they will not sell to individuals. You will have to have your school order it, and you can pay your school back for it (but read the Sigma Creed first!). You will also need other supplies also to test the enzyme's activity. And you will need stabilizing materials, whatever they may be. Again, you will be the first person ever to do this, so no cookbook procedure can be given here. You must develop the method.
Let's now discuss what happens with a protein such as a vaccine or an enzyme deteriorates in heat. Find a college level general biology of biochemistry textbook and look up pictures of secondary and tertiary structures of proteins. What happens with heat is that the complicated protein molecules unwind and tangle up in different ways - and these no longer have the right shapes to carry out their catalytic duties. Protein vaccines do much the same. This process is called "denaturization." A couple of very common examples with which you are acquainted are the gelling of egg white when it is heated, and the change of color in meat as it is heated - the redness of the hemoglobins and cytochromes changes to browns (gravy and well-done meat, respectively).
Here is a partialy successful strategy that was begun by a small group of college students a few years ago. You might want to try it and expand upon it, or you might decide to do something totally different. It's your option; it's your project!
The college students reasoned that if they could prevent the unwinding of the molecules by strait-jacketing them inside of solid (like freezing them in ice would do), the molecules would be unable to denature and should be storable at room temperature for long periods of time. They jumped one step further ahead: they knew that whatever strait-jacket compound or "binder" they used should also apply to constraining vaccine molecules, which would need to be injected into someone's body, and not cause allergic reactions.
How to use the binder: The thought was to dissolve the enzymes into a gel and then dry out the gel in the cold. As the gel molecules contracted they would trap and squeeze and hold the enzyme molecules in their original shapes. At first they thought of gelatin, but that is a protein and would have all sorts of unwanted side-effects if injected into a person or animals. Then they thought of agar, but that is also immunogenic. Finally they thought of starch, which makes nice gels. Pure starch should not be immungenic, as it is already in our bodies.
And the students jumped yet one more step ahead: "If our vaccine were embedded in a dried-out pellet of starch gel, and that pellet were somehow injected under someone's skin, would the body be able to liberate the vaccine molecules?" This turned out very easy to test. They took dried spagetti (dried gels of starch), and inserted small sharpened lengths into various meats (muscle).
They then waited for various amounts of time and found that the spagetti rapidly hydrated and disappeared within minutes. Actually what the students did was make linear incisions into the meat, inserted the spagetti, and at timed intervals they could fold back the meat to take a look inside the incisions with the results shown below. Apparently the muscle has a lot of amylase in it.
You see that at about 15 minutes, the "root" of the spagetti has been totally hydrolyzed and the protruding part has fallen over.
Good! That test was passed, but... can a heat sensitive enzyme be stabilized in dried starch gels? First, a solution of the enzyme was made and raised to a tropical temperature. At timed intervals, it was tested for enzymatic activity. This was how the control went. You can see that it deteriorated to minimal activity in 8 hours.
Starch gels of various concentrations were made (you will have to figure out which might be best for your situation - IF starch is for you!), and into them were rapidly dissolved enzymes such as aldolase at the concentration used in the control solution above. These were rapidly cooled to gel (but not frozen as freezing disturbs the gel), and then left in gauze-covered dishes in the refrigerator to evaporate to dryness. Brittle pieces were then broken off and tested at timed intervals for enzyme activity.
Here you see that the enzyme when strait-jacketted in the starch gel took 64 hours to deteriorate to minimal activity. Let's say that at 48 hours the enzyme analog of the vaccine is still efficacious. That is two days in hot weather versus only 8 useless hrs for the control. Perhaps two days is long enough to go from a refrigerator to paddle up some remote jungle river to get the vaccine to an isolated village. But perhaps there is a better method.
Your Experiment
Perhaps the above has given you some ideas. To be sure, this is not a "quickie" experiment. But, if you get even one method to work on one sort of enzyme, and if that method will work in the hands of experts on a vaccine, you will be responsible for saving perhaps thousands or millions of lives. This is no small matter!
It is expected that the biggest hurdle that students will have is not doing the work, but moving it past research and getting it into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry where it will be developed as a vaccine and then distributed. Publication is very necessary. And remember that only a published scientific document makes the author a scientist. The scientific method includes publication!
Because of the novelty of any results in this effort, please TELL THIS WEBSITE what your results were.