Stabilizing Vaccines with Silk
Vaccines must be kept cold up until the moment that they are administered to a patient. This poses a problem in the developing world where infrastructure can interrupt the refrigeration during storage and transport. Numerous labs and companies are working to solve the problem. For instance, one Cambridge-based startup called Vaxess is using an extract from silk to stabilize vaccines, and their preliminary results are promising.
This is a web video that I produced for NOVA.
Audio only:
