College: Kakatiya College, India
Email: bobsh080@student.otago.ac.nz
Thesis title: Sustained release formulations as therapeutic cancer vaccines
Co-supervisor: Prof. Sarah Hook (School of Pharmacy, University of Otago)
Project description: A solution to the need for repeated dosing (commonly termed boosting) may be to use single-shot vaccines that release the vaccine for a sustained period of time. One such strategy I am working on is delivering the vaccine containing nanoparticulate carriers from thermoresponsive hydrogels (Sol-room temperature and gel-body temperature).
I will be investigating the strength of the hydrogels, gel stability, loading and release of vaccine components from the gel systems. Both cellular and humoral immune responses will be examined to know the ability of vaccine formulations to stimulate therapeutic and prophylactic anti-tumor responses.