SCIENTISTS have borrowed a trick from nature to devise vaccines that do not need complex refrigeration — and could deliver better healthcare to millions of children in the Third World.

Vaccines exist to control most childhood diseases, but every year two million children die from these diseases. About half the vaccines made are ruined by getting too hot or too cold at some point between manufacture and delivery. This means that millions of pounds of vaccines are thrown away, or that they are used but give no protection. Managing the “cold chain” from start to finish is complex and demanding, especially in poorer countries.

Now a British company has devised a way of immortalising vaccines by wrapping them in sugar molecules and excluding water. The trick is used by plants, animals and by yeasts to survive when drought strikes.

Some plant species, such as the Resurrection Plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, have come back to life after more than a century of hibernation just by adding water. “Within minutes or hours they turn back into active, fully-functioning plants,” Bruce Roser, of Cambridge Biostability, the company behind the development, said.

The new vaccine will incorporate five childhood vaccines — for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type b, which causes meningitis. The vaccines will be produced as tiny microspheres wrapped in a sugar and contained in a non-water liquid, such as an oil. The combination has proved stable at temperatures of 55C (too hot to hold) for six months. A normal vaccine would be dead in a week of such temperatures.

Injected into the child, the vaccines will dissolve in the body fluids, the sugar will disappear and the vaccines will go to work. Yesterday the Department for International Development said that it had given a grant of £950,000 for development and a deal has been struck with an Indian biotechnology firm to produce it.

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