Vaccines combat diseases and protect populations from
outbreaks, but the life-saving technology leaves room for improvement. Vaccines
usually are made en masse in centralized locations far removed from where they
will be used. They are expensive to ship and keep refrigerated and they tend to
have short shelf lives.
University of Washington engineers hope a new type of
vaccine they have shown to work in mice will one day make it cheaper and easy
to manufacture on-demand vaccines for humans. Immunizations could be
administered within minutes where and when a disease is breaking out.