Robertoeford

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vaccines

To understand how silk will help stabilize vaccines and antibiotics, first understanding what vaccines and antibiotics are is needed. Vaccines are pieces of dead, live, inactivated murobes, toxins, antigens. virus or bacteria given to people as an immunize against a disease. The body recognizes this virus or bacteria as a foreign object in the body and attacks any sign of the virus or bacteria. Vaccines are given to prevent a viral infection from starting in the body. Antibiotics are small molecules of a disease that are given to somebody who has a bacteria infection. Some antibiotics kill or stop the bacteria from multiplying in the body. To keep vaccines and antibiotics effective for use, they are stored in controlled humidity and temperatures. If exposed to heat or humidity for long periods of time their chemical makeup breaks down. The importance of vaccines is shown by eradication diseases like smallpox since 19777. that gaps in the cold-chain result in the lose of close to half of all vaccines worldwide. Also 80% of the lost of vaccines and antibiotics is in keeping them cold. They say billions of dollars of drugs are lost annually due to high temperatures and humidity. In undeveloped countries where refrigeration is limited that means half that need them will not receive it. Even when some of the vaccines and antibiotics are able to be delivered they could be ineffective because of how controlled the temperature need to be. Stabilizing this drugs with silk would lower the cost in storing and shipping these lifesaving medicines around the world.

Doctor David Kaplan and his research team at Tufts University have investigated how silk proteins can increase the self life of vaccines and antibiotics at high temperatures. Silk fibers purified from the cocoons of silkworms are highly resistant to changes in moisture and temperature. Studied have found that the fibers can form a mesh-like environment that help to immobilize molecules and stabilize their structure. The team has developed a new silk based film from fibers. They found that in mobilizing the MMR(measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in the silk film greatly enhanced its stability. Even after storing it at temperatures of 113 farenheilt for 6 months, the vaccine retained moree than 80% of its potency. " We have already begun trying to broaden the impact of what we're doing to apply to all vaccines," says Kaplan. "This could potentially eliminate the need for the cold-chain system, greatly decreasing costs and enabling more widespread availability of this life-saving drugs."[NIH]

Silkworms secrete silk composed of two different types of proteins. Of the two proteins, fibroin at the center of the silk strand is responsible for its tensile strength while sericin on the exterior of the strand is responsible for its stickiness and adhesive abilities. When silk is harvested from silkworms it is typically processed so that only the fibroin-a long protein chain consisting of both hydrophobic(greasy or water-fearing) and hydrophilic(water-loving) regions-remain. The internal dichotomy of interspersed hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions allows the strands of silk fibroin to pack very tightly against each other (similar to the way droplets of oil bunch together when you put them in water) to form strong films interspersed with tiny crystalline pockets where the hydrophilic regions meet. When the silk is processed in a solution that also contains biological materials, such as vaccine particles or antibiotic small molecules, it can encapsulate these materials inside the crystalline pockets, protecting them from all external perturbation. silk films are attractive materials for biomedical applications due not only to their durability under envirnomental and mechanical stress, but also to their compatibility with biological systems. Silk fibroin has already been used in suturing and arterial stents, and the human body can break it down in a slow and controlled fashion to yield non-toxic degradation products.[harvard.edu]Robertoeford (talk) 10:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)