Harnessing novel and ecological-friendly natural nanocarriers for vaccine development

The whole world has witnessed the nationwide pandemic COVID-19 which had detrimental financial, social, and psychological consequences on the community such as shops’ shut down, fuel crises, and unemployability, to name but a few.

We have also lost many relatives, family members, and loved ones due to the lack of treatment or vaccine inaccessibility, especially in low-income or middle-income countries such as Jordan.

The pandemic clearly unveiled the inadequate knowledge and experience in vaccine development in Jordan specifically and in the Middle East region generally.

Recently, we have successfully developed a novel method to produce a new generation of alginate nanoparticles without the need for an organic solvent.

The produced nanosystem is totally ecological-friendly and biocompatible without known toxicity or harm to humans or climate and thus replacing the unsafe viral vectors.

Therefore, our aim is to address the insufficient experience in vaccine delivery by employing the developed alginate nanoparticles to deliver mRNA/DNA responsible for expressing viral proteins such as spike proteins.

These are antigens responsible for stimulating the immune system to produce specific antibodies in the human body to neutralise the effect of viruses e.g., SARS-COV-2. Which avoids the non-specific immune overactivity e.g., cytokine storm that causes detrimental damage to normal cells.

To achieve this goal, transfection efficiency, cellular uptake of the nanoparticles, and antigen expression should be investigated using high-end, and cutting-edge technologies such as high resolution-confocal fluorescence microscopy, and multi-laser flow cytometry.

Unfortunately, in Jordan, we lack not only the advanced equipment but also the expertise and the needed image processing software such as a 3-D construction of the images of nanoparticles-cellular uptake.

Therefore, the purpose of this research visit is to perform all previously mentioned experiments and protocols required to provide significant insights into the potential of using the established alginate nanosystem for mRNA delivery and eventually developing vaccines in the future. Significance: There are raising concerns about climate change due to organic solvent waste as reported by the UN.

Consequently, the developed nanosystem is not only composed of a natural source that is considered a green nanomaterial, but also the method of synthesising the nanoparticles is totally organic solvent-free and ecological-friendly. It is based on the process dubbed proton-gelation and does not produce any organic solvent waste.

The significance of utilising these eco-friendly nanocarriers is to inevitably replace the existing viral vectors, used for mRNA delivery in the vaccine, which possesses a plethora of side effects to the human body including viral DNA-human genome incorporation and DNA mutation.

This green nanosystem is produced in accordance with sustainable development goals (SDGs) set by the UN which highly recommends eliminating the disposal of organic solvent waste in the environment.

The application of the developed nanosystem as a nanocarrier for mRNA delivery to target cells represents a major forward step towards bridging the research gap in the field of vaccine development.

This is of importance for developing countries such as Jordan, which will have a societal impact by improving people's well-being in these countries during global pandemics.