Some time in the future you may be getting a tattoo, a doctor approved and prescribed tattoo. German scientists believe that tattooing is a more effective way of delivering experimental DNA vaccines than standard injections due to experiments they have been conducting on mice.
Stimulating an immune response by using fragments of DNA is considered a promising way to create better vaccines for everything from cancer to the flu but to date the low efficiency of the vaccine has slowed its progress.
"Delivery of DNA via tattooing could be a way for a more widespread commercial application of DNA vaccines," said Martin Mueller of the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg.
Currently there are no approved DNA vaccines on the market but drug companies are conducting trials and investing in the technology including Pfizer who stepped into the DNA vaccine arena when it purchased PowerMed in 2006.
Researchers tested the technique by tattoo vaccinating mice with a protein fragment of the sexually transmitted disease HPV (human papillomavirus) that causes cervical cancer. The tattoos are inkless and leave no permanent marking. Results found that three doses of DNA vaccine via tattoo achieved more than a 16 times higher antibody level response than three standard intramuscular injections indicating that while the tattoo method is more painful it is also more efficient.
"This is probably what makes it work better than normal injections because the tissue is damaged and this affects the immune cells, which then look out for antigens," Mueller said.
The research is published in the online journal Genetic Vaccines.
[Source: YahooNews]
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