Vaccine-making photochemical device boosts CSU infectious disease research

The SolaVAX™ process is rooted in a traditional vaccine technology - using an inactivated viral pathogen to stimulate an immune response - similar to how the influenza vaccine is made. But SolaVAX™ uses the safe, benign vitamin riboflavin, more commonly known as vitamin B2, in place of toxic chemicals like formalin, beta propiolactone or others that must be removed from the solution at the end of the process. In other words, explained Hartson, their method is a "gentler" but no less effective way of rendering pathogens inert while preserving the antigenic proteins that stimulate the desired immune response.

Engineering the device

The design of the VacciRAPTOR was inspired by a previous collaboration between Mizia and Goodrich in which they created a water-purification device using the same riboflavin-UV light chemistry.

The riboflavin-UV light process requires each unit volume of liquid to get illuminated evenly and consistently, said Mizia, explaining the engineering challenges of the project. "If you imagine you have a big light source and a big plate to try and do the entire surface area, and you're flowing the liquid in, what if the corner here doesn't get as much illumination as the center?" Mizia said. "The way to eliminate that problem was to have a fairly small passageway traverse through a homogenous light field. That's how we came up with the coil idea."

The original Mirasol blood pathogen reduction device treats approximately 30 milliliters (or one ounce) of liquid per minute. By comparison, the engineers' new high-flowthrough device can inactivate about 1,000 milliliters (or one liter) of liquid per minute, according to Andraski, the master's student in mechanical engineering who worked on the VacciRAPTOR with Mizia and Willman and is writing his thesis on the technology.

"We're theorizing that this unit can eventually process in excess of 80 liters per hour, or something like 100,000 vaccine doses per hour," Andraski said.

Pan-coronavirus vaccine, polio, influenza

Izabela Ragan, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, serves on the team using the VacciRAPTOR to make and test vaccines, including a pan-coronavirus vaccine and one for Leishmaniasis. "The current plan is to use this new device for our research programs and to develop other inactivated vaccine candidates against parasites, bacteria and viruses," Ragan said. "This device will help create the vaccine material needed for preclinical testing."