Towards ambient temperature-stable vaccines

As a result of thermal instability, some live attenuated viral (LAV) vaccines lose substantial potency from the time of manufacture to the point of administration. Developing regions lacking extensive, reliable refrigeration (\"cold-chain\") infrastructure are particularly vulnerable to vaccine failure, which in turn increases the burden of disease. Development of a robust, infectivity-based high throughput screening process for identifying thermostable vaccine formulations offers significant promise for vaccine development across a wide variety of LAV products. Here we describe a system that incorporates thermal stability screening into formulation design using heat labile measles virus as a prototype. The screening of >11,000 unique formulations resulted in the identification of liquid formulations with marked improvement over those used in commercial monovalent measles vaccines, with