To develop and test new treatments or vaccines for humans, almost always requires animal testing.
Now, US researchers have developed a new test platform that encapsulates the B cellssome of the most important components of the immune system, into “miniature organoids” for use in testing vaccines before human clinical trials.
The team, led by Professor Matthew DeLisa of Cornell University and Dr. Ankur Singh of the Georgia Institute of Technology, made organoides made from mouse spleens and wrapped in a hydrogel matrix before injecting them with candidate molecules for a tularemia or “rabbit fever” vaccine.
The traditional way of testing vaccines involves injecting them into animals and waiting weeks or months for the result. Scientists often need to evaluate many candidate vaccines, which requires numerous animal studies.
In this case, the results of the experiment demonstrated that B cell responses to the molecules were similar in organoids and mice, although some differences will need further investigation.
“These findings highlight the potential of synthetic organoids to rapidly predict the efficacy of conjugate vaccines, as well as to accelerate the discovery of antigen-specific antibodies,” reads the study published in the journal ACS Central Science.
The team found that the platform might be used to identify B cell clones that generate highly antigen-specific antibodies, which have a wide variety of potential applications.
