Lipid-Based Nanoparticles for Vaccine Applications

Currently available vaccine adjuvants are ineffective against a wide range of infectious pathogens as well as cancers. Therefore, there is a critical demand for new vaccine strategies that can elicit potent cellular and humoral immune responses. Liposomes have been widely examined as vaccine delivery systems because of their safety, low toxicity, and ease of scale-up. However, successful clinical translation of liposomal vaccines has been hampered by their limited potency to induce strong T and B cell responses. In this chapter, we will present two classes of lipid-based nanoparticle systems designed to address limitations of liposomal vaccines and discuss their potential as vaccine delivery systems. The first class of lipid-based nanoparticles presented in this chapter is termed interbilayer-crosslinked multilamellar vesicles. These novel vaccine nanoparticles are stable vehicles that can effectively deliver antigens and adjuvant molecules to antigen-presenting cells in lymphoid tissues and induce robust T and B cell immune responses in vivo. The second class of vaccine nanoparticles is lipoproteins composed of endogenous proteins and lipids. Applications of lipoproteins for vaccine delivery have recently gained much attention due to their safety and multi-faceted functions as endogenous drug delivery vehicles. We provide an overview on the latest advances in this rapidly evolving interdisciplinary area of research, and we discuss biomaterial-based innovations enabled by nanotechnology for improving vaccine design and development.