Reasons for instability of bacterial vaccines

Stability problems in relation to bacterial vaccines vary widely between different types of product. Killed whole cell bacterial vaccines including pertussis, cholera and typhoid vaccines generally show a high degree of stability of potency. Reversion to toxicity may occur in incompletely inactivated pertussis vaccines. Live attenuated vaccines such as BCG and Ty21a typhoid vaccines lose potency through loss of viability when exposed to adverse conditions. Both vaccines are susceptible to ultra violet radiation but Ty21a also has low thermal stability. Its fragility is probably a consequence of multiple mutations affecting structural and metabolic factors. Diphtheria and tetanus toxoids generally show high stability of potency. Reversion to toxicity may occur if the toxoiding process is inadequate. Decline in potency may result from exposure to adverse conditions, such as freezing, that affect the interaction with the adjuvant. Similar problems may be encountered with purified subunit vaccines such as acellular pertussis preparations. Some components, in particular pertussis toxin and filamentous haemagglutinin, show inherent low stability and degrade on storage at refrigerator temperatures unless stabilized by a protein cross-linking agent. Bacterial proteases carried over from the cell cultures may also be responsible for degradation of purified components. Purified bacterial polysaccharides usually show high stability if freeze-dried under appropriate conditions. Catalytic degradation may occur however, if the stabilizers are of inadequate purity. Polysaccharide-protein conjugates such as Haemophilus influenzae b (Hib) polyribosylribityl phosphate-protein conjugates show high thermal stability if freeze dried. In the liquid state, such conjugates tend to degrade by hydrolysis of the polysaccharide chains. Combined vaccines may present special stability problems because of the interaction of the various components in the liquid state. It can be difficult to freeze-dry some components of such vaccines, particularly aluminium hydroxide-adsorbed diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) components. Slow release vaccines based on polyglycolide-factolide microspheres may show suboptimal stability of encapsulated antigen under both in vitro conditions as a result of gradual acidification through polymer hydrolysis. Vaccines based on the use of live recombinant strains to express heterologous protective antigens may present special stability problems. Apart from the carrier strains, heterologous genes carried on plasmids may be subject to spontaneous deletion under adverse conditions. These issues have received relatively little attention hitherto but are likely to achieve greater prominence as development of such preparations proceeds.