Research and development of a new oral administration of the vaccine in the company AUMED, a.s.

As part of the 4th public tender in the TRIO program, AUMED has a project for a new version of the human vaccine carrier. The subject of the project is research and development of a new oral administration of the vaccine. The aim of the project is a microbial vaccine in the form of a lyophilized tablet which intended for administration into the oral cavity. A newly innovated pertussis vaccine has been chosen as a model vaccine which was developed by the company AUMED, a.s. in recent years. AUMED, a.s. cooperates on this project with the Charles University, Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové (Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Head of Department: doc. PharmDr. Zdeňka Šklubalová, Ph.D.).

The chosen model vaccine is justified in the increasing number of local epidemics of whooping cough even in populations that are vaccinated against an infectious agent. The reason for the failure of the currently used vaccines is to move away from the whole-cell vaccine (due to the higher reactogenicity of the original whole-cell vaccine) and use instead the acellular form of the vaccine as the less reactogenic form. However, the acellular vaccines did not meet the expected long-term protective effect. The phenomenon of increasing number of local epidemics of whooping cough affects not only our region, but also most of Europe and the US. In addition, epidemiological forecasts assume that the current state represents only a “start” of the trend and that in the following years will there be a sharp rise in whooping cough in the population. Moreover, in the context of increasing antibiotic resistance, this is a dramatic outlook that needs to be addressed rapidly by developing new vaccine approaches.