Safe and potent adjuvants are highly demanded to aid in development of new and improved vaccines. Due to the slow progress in developing novel chemical adjuvants, we took a different approach to develop physical radiofrequency adjuvant (RFA) to boost vaccination. RFA emits alternating electromagnetic fields in the skin surface and induce tissue stress to alert […]

Virus-like particles (VLPs) simulate natural viruses and are able to induce potent humoral and cellular immune responses. VLPs have been attractive vaccine delivery platforms due to their high immunogenicity and safety. Hepatitis b core (HBc) VLPs have been widely explored to display foreign antigens by insertion into its c/e1 loop. Yet, only small antigenic peptides […]

This project explores ablative fractional laser as a minimally invasive tool to generate skin microchannels to facilitate transcutaneous drug delivery and vaccination. Various patch systems are developed to allow powder drugs to be loaded for convenient delivery via laser-generated skin microchannels. Laser-based powder delivery takes advantage of water evaporated from skin microchannels to dissolve topical […]

One obstacle in developing safer and more potent adjuvants is the lack of understanding about adjuvant mechanisms. Significant progress has been made in the last two decades in elucidation of mechanisms of commonly used adjuvants. Despite these advances, a complete understanding about their action mechanisms is still elusive. This project takes advantage of omics techniques […]

mRNA evolves as a novel vaccine platform with unique advantages, such as quick production, low risk of genome integration, and high immunogenicity as can be seen from Moderna and Pfizer mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines. Due to its high immunogenicity, no adjuvants have been added to further boost mRNA vaccine efficacy. Yet, adjuvants may be needed to […]