<story><title>Breakthrough in Synthetic Vaccine Technology Requires No Refrigeration</title><url>https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/september/synthetic-vaccine.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fnord77</author><text>would this work for biologic drugs like remicade, humira and the like that require refrigeration?</text></comment>
<story><title>Breakthrough in Synthetic Vaccine Technology Requires No Refrigeration</title><url>https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/september/synthetic-vaccine.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mabbo</author><text>This is a huge deal.&lt;p&gt;A big issue the anti-vaccine movement latched onto was &amp;quot;they contain mercury!&amp;quot;. Technically true- a compound used as a preservative has some mercury molecules in it. Never mind that it wasn&amp;#x27;t elemental mercury and was perfectly safe to ingest, or that the quantity of mercury was less than is in most fish-based diets.&lt;p&gt;The end result was a lot of third world countries naively banning vaccines containing mercury- meaning that all these vaccines no longer had preservatives that let them survive longer outside of refrigeration. It&amp;#x27;s hard to bring &amp;quot;must stay refrigerated&amp;quot; anything into rural areas in less developed parts of the world (or at least, it&amp;#x27;s a lot more expensive to do it). End result: fewer people vaccinated, and more preventable deaths, higher costs per person saved.&lt;p&gt;This kind of breakthrough, if applicable more widely, could save millions (of both lives and dollars).</text></comment>