Scientists are developing nose sprays that can protect against infectious diseases such as flu, a conference was to be told today.
The key is to be combine standard vaccines with an immune system booster, a major scientific conference was set to hear.
Prototype vaccines for flu, pneumonia and even the plague have so far been developed and tested on laboratory mice, the conference of the Society for General Microbiology in Harrogate, UK, has been told.
The aim of the sprays is to vaccine the nose to prevent infectious diseases gaining access to the body.
Professor Dennis Metzger, of Albany Medical College, New York, USA, has used the immune chemical IL-12 as an immune system booster.
He says it stimulates the cells of the nose to generate an immune response to vaccines.
He said: "Infectious agents still account for around 25 per cent of deaths worldwide and the major killers are acute respiratory infections. However, it is difficult to induce immunity at the site of entry and so standard vaccines are only partially protective.
"Intranasal vaccination gets around this problem by inducing immunity in the pulmonary passage. This prevents initial infection as well as systemic complications".
He added: "We now have evidence that this method could work for a wide range of vaccines when IL-12 is included in formulation."
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