What to know

• Fridge-free vaccines passed first human trial with equivalent immune response and safety to conventional vaccines, addressing a critical bottleneck in global immunization.
• Current cold chain failures cause roughly 50% of all vaccines worldwide to be wasted annually, with disproportionate impact on remote and resource-poor regions.
• The technology uses trehalose (inspired by resurrection plants) to preserve vaccines as dry powder stable at room temperature for extended periods, then reconstituted before injection.
• A 160-person trial begins in coming months as the final research stage; one in five African children remain unvaccinated, representing a major target population for this innovation.

Stablepharma Vaccine developerProf Saul Faust NIHR Clinical Research Facility directorProf Sir Jonathan Van-Tam Advisor to Stablepharma; former UK deputy chief medical officerUK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Research institution conducting trials