Oral Vaccine Delivery: The Coming Age of Particulate Vaccines to Elicit Mucosal Immunity

With the evolution of different challenging diseases, there is an urgent need of vaccine development against them to save millions of lives around the world. Particlulate delivery system plays an important role by acting as self-adjuvant in form of particles and thus assisting the immunogenicity of vaccines. Particulate vaccines have shown to have improved uptake by antigen presenting cells as compared to the soluble antigen. Traditional injectable vaccines are generally poor inducers of mucosal immunity and are therefore less effective against infections at the mucosal site. Mucosal vaccines have been reported to provide additional secretory antibody mediated protection at the mucosal site of entry of the pathogen. In this chapter, we discuss the benefits of particulate drug delivery systems for oral delivery, the role of immune system in the gut, and a case study ofa novel particulate vaccine formulated into oral dissolving film for immunization via the buccal route. Key formulation components, process parameters and their biophysical characterizations have been discussed as well.