It's a pleasure to be here

in Edinburgh, Scotland,

the birthplace of the needle and syringe.

Less than a mile from here in this direction

in 1853 a Scotsman

filed his very first patent on the needle and syringe.

His name was Alexander Wood

and it was at the Royal College of Physicians.

This is the patent.

What blows my mind when I look at it even today

is that it looks almost identical

to needle in use today

Yet, it's 160 years old.

So we turn to the field of vaccines

most vaccines are delivered with

the needle and syringe,

this 160 year old technology.

And credit where its due on many levels

vaccines are a successful technology.

After clean water and sanitation,

vaccines are the one technology that has increased

our life span the most.

That's a pretty hard act to beat.

But just like any other technology

vaccines have their shortcomings

and the needle, the needle and syringe

is a key part within that narrative ...

this old technology.

So let's start with the obvious:

many of us don't like the needle and syringe.

I share that view.

However, 20 percent of the population

have a thing called needle phobia.

That's more than disliking the needle

that is actively avoiding being vaccinated

because of needle phobia.

And that's problematic in terms of the rollout

of vaccines.

Now related to this is another key issue

which is needlestick injuries.

And the WHO has figures

that suggest about 1.3 million deaths per year

take place due to cross contamination

with needlestick injuries.

These are early deaths that take place.

Now these are two things that 
you probably may have heard of

but there are two other shortcomings of

the needle and syringe you may not have heard about.

One is it could be holding back

the next generation of vaccines

in terms of their immune responses.

And the second is that it could be responsible

for the problem of the cold chain

that I'll tell you about as well.

I'm going to tell you about some work that

my team and I are doing in Australia

at the University of Queensland

on a technology of design

to tackle those four problems.

And that technology is called the Nanopatch.

Now, this is a specimen of the Nanopatch.

To the naked eye

it just looks like a square

smaller than a postage stamp,

but under a microscope

what you see is thousands of tiny proejctions

that are invisible to the human eye.

And there's about 4 thousand projections

on this particular square compared

to the needle.

And I've designed those projections

to serve a key roll which is to work

with the skin's immune system.

So that's a very important function

tied into the Nanopatch.

Now we make the Nanopatch

with a technique

called deep reactive ion etching ...

and this particular technique is one that's been

borrowed from the semiconductor industry

and therefore, is low costing

and can be rolled out in large numbers.

Now we dry coat vaccines to the projections

of the Nanopatch

and apply it to the skin.

Now the simplest form of application

is using our finger,

but our finger has some limitations.

So, we've devised an applicator

and it's a very simple device --

you could call it a sophisticated finger.

It's a screen operated device.

What we do is when we apply the Nanopatch

to the skin, as so ...

immediately a few things happen.

So firstly, the projections

on the Nanopatch

breach through the tough outer layer

and the vaccine is very quickly released,

within less than a minute in fact.

Then we can take the Nanopatch off

and discard it.

And indeed we can make a reuse

of the applicator itself.

So that gives you an idea of the Nanopatch

and immediately you can see some key advantages.

We've talked about it being needle-free,

These are projections that you can't even see

and of course we get around

the needle phobia issue as well.

Now, if we take a step back and think about

these other two really important advantages:

one is improved immune responses through delivery

and the second is getting rid of the cold chain.

So let's start with the first one,

this immunogenicity idea, it takes a little while

to get our head around but

I'll try to explain it in simple terms.

So I'll take a step back and explain to you

how vaccines work in a simple way

So vaccines work by introducing to our body

a thing called an antigen

which is a safe form of a germ.

Now that safe germ, that antigen,

tricks our body into mounting an immune response,

learning and remembering how to deal with intruders.

When the real intruder comes along

the body quickly mounts an immune response

to deal with that vaccine

and neutralizes the infection.

So it does that well.

Now, why it's done today with the needle and syringe

is most vaccines are delivered that way --

with this old technology and the needle.

But it could be argued

that the needle is holding back

our immune responses;

it's missing our immune sweet spot

in the skin.

To describe this idea

we need to take a journey through the skin

starting with one of those projections

and applying the Nanopatch to the skin.

And we see this kind of data ...

now this is real data ...

that thing that we can see there is one projection

from the Nanopatch that's been applied to the skin

and those colors are different layers.

Now to give you an idea of scale,

if the needle was shown here it would be too big.

It would be ten times bigger

than the size of that screen
going ten times deeper as well.

It's off the grid entirely.

You can see immediately that we have those

projections in the skin.

That red layer is a tough outer layer of dead skin

but the brown layer

and the magenta layer

are jammed full of immune cells.

As one example, in the brown layer

theres a certain type of cell called Langerhan cell --

every square millimeter of our body

is jammed full of those Langerhan cells,

those immune cells, and 
there's others shown as well

that we haven't [unclear] in this image

but you can immediately see that the Nanopatch

achieves that penetration indeed.

We target thousands upon thousands 
of these particualar cells

just residing within a hair's width

of the surface of the skin.

Now, as the guy that has invented

this thing and designed it to do that

I found that exciting. But so what?

So what if you've targeted cells,

in the world of vaccines what does that mean?

The world of vaccines is getting better.

It's getting more systematic.

However, you still don't really know

if a vaccine is going to work

until you roll your sleeves up

and vaccinate and wait.

It's a gambler's game even today.

So, we had to do that gamble.

We obtained an influenza vaccine,

we applied it to Nanopatches

and we applied the Nanopatches to the skin

and we waited.

And this is in the live animal.

And we waited a month

and this is what we found out:

This is a data slide showing the immune responses

that we've generated with a Nanopatch

compared to the needle and syringe into muscle.

So in the horizontal access we have 
the dose show in Nanograms

on the vertical access we have

the immune response generated on that dashed line.

At that dashed line indicates the protection threshold

If we're above that line it's considered protective;

If we're below that line, it's not.

So the red line is mostly that curve

and indeed there's only one point achieved

with the needle that's protective

and thats with a high dose of 6 thousand nanograms

but notice immediately the distinctly different curve that we achieve

with the blue line.

That's what's achieved with the nanopatch

the delivered dose of the Nanopatch is a completely different

immune- fads curve

that's a real fresh opportunity

suddenly we have a brand new leaver

in the world of vaccines

We can push it one way where we can take a vaccine that works

but is too expensive and we can get protection

with a hundredth of the dose

Or we can take it afkdaslf

down to ten cents and that's particularly important

within the developing world

But there's another angle to this as well

you can take vaccines that currently don't work

and get them over that line

and get them protective

And certainly in the world of vaccines

that can be important

let's consider the big three

HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis

they're responsible for about 7 thousand deaths per year

and there is no adequate vaccination method for any of those.

So potentially with this new leaver that we have with the Nanopatch

we can help make that happen, we can push that leaver

to help get those asdfkasfjla vaccines over the line.

Now of course we've worked with the lab with many other vaccines

that have attained similar responses and similar curves

achieved with influenza

I'd like to now switch to talk about

another key shortcoming of today in vaccines

and that is the need to maintain the cold chain.

As the name suggests, it's the requirement of keeping a vaccine right from production

all the through to when the vaccine is applied

to keep it refrigerated.

Now, that presents some logistical challenges

but we have ways to do it.

This is a slightly extreme case in point

but it helps illustrate the logistical challenges

in particular settings of what's required to get settings to maintain the cold chain

if the vaccine is to warm the vaccine breaks down

but interestingly the vaccine can be too cold

and it will break down as well.

The steaks are very high

the WHR estimates that in Africa up to half

the vaccines used there

are considered to not be working properly because at some point

the cold chain has fallen over

So it's a big problem

and it's tied in with the needle and syringe

because the liquid at needs of refrigeration

A key attribute of our Nanopatch is that the vaccine is dry

and when it's dry it doesn't need refrigeration.

Within my lab theres we can keep the vaccine stored

at twenty-three degree's celcius for more than a year

without any loss

That's an important improvement.

(Applause)

We're delighted about it as well.

And the thing about it is that we've well and truly proven

the Nanopatch within the laboratory setting.

And as a scientist, I love that and I love science.

However, as an engineer,

as a biomedical engineer

and also as a human being,

I'm not going to be satisfied until we've

rolled this thing out and taken it out of the lab

and got it to people in large numbers

and particularly the people who need it the most.

So we've commenced this particular journey

and we've commenced it in an unusual way

We've started with Papua New Guinea.

Now Papua New Guinea

is an example of a developing world country

and its about the same size as France

but it suffers from many of the key barriers

existing within the world of todays vaccines.

There's logistics:

Within this country there are only 800 refrigerators

to keep vaccines chilled.

Many of them are old like this one in Port Moresby.

Many of them are breaking down

and many of them are not in the Highlands

where they are required.

That's a challenge.

But also, Papua New Guinea

has the worlds highest incidence of HPV,

Human Papilloma Virus, the cervical cancer vaccine.

Yet, that vacccine is not available in large numbers

because it's too expensive.

So for those two reasons

with the attributes of the Nanopatch

we've got into field

and worked with the Nanopatch

and taken it to Papua New Guinea

and we'll be following that up shortly.

Now doing this kind of work is not easy.

It's challenging,

but there's nothing else in the world

I'd rather be doing.

And as we look ahead

I'd like to share with you a thought —

it's the thought of a future where

the 17 million deaths per year

that we currently have

due to infectious disease is a historical footnote.

And it's a historical footnote that has been achieved

by radically improved vaccines.

Now standing here today in front of you

at the birthplace of the needle and syringe

a device that's 160 years old

I'm presenting to you an alternative approach

that could really help make that happen

and it's the Nanopatch

with it's attributes of being needle-free, pain-free

the ability for removing the cold chain

and improving the immunogenicity.

Thank you.

(Applause)