Edited by Peter Palese, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, and approved January 6, 2011 (received for review December 2, 2010)
Measles remains an important cause of childhood mortality worldwide. Sustained high vaccination coverage is the key to preventing measles deaths. Because measles vaccine is delivered by injection, hurdles to high coverage include the need for trained medical personnel and a cold chain, waste of vaccine in multidose vials and risks associated with needle use and disposal. Respiratory vaccine delivery could lower these barriers and facilitate sustained high coverage. We developed a novel single unit dose, dry powder live-attenuated measles vaccine (MVDP) for respiratory delivery without reconstitution. We tested the immunogenicity and protective efficacy in rhesus macaques of one dose of MVDP delivered either with a mask or directly intranasal with two dry powder inhalers, PuffHaler and BD Solovent. MVDP induced robust measles virus (MeV)-specific humoral and T-cell responses, without adverse effects, which completely protected the macaques from infection with wild-type MeV more than one year later. Respiratory delivery of MVDP was safe and effective and could aid in measles control.
Author contributions: W.-H.L., D.E.G., P.A.R., M.P., R.E.S., and S.W. designed research; W.-H.L., S.P.C., D.B., B.Q., C.S., K.P., R.J.A., and S.G. performed research; S.P.C., D.B., B.Q., C.S., and K.P. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; W.-H.L., P.A.R., and M.P. analyzed data; and W.-H.L., D.E.G., and S.W. wrote the paper.
Conflict of interest statement: D.B., B.Q., and R.E.S. are employees of Aktiv-Dry LLC that developed the vaccine processing and Puffhaler delivery. C.S. and K.P. are employees of BD Technologies that developed the Solovent delivery.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1017334108/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
