A considerable amount of human infections take place in mucous of the body, which is the reason why it is important to trigger immunological protection in this area. Even though parenteral administration of antigen induces efficient systemic protection, mucous from the body keep unprotected. Although attempts have been made to activate immunological protection in mucous membranes through different routes of application, some of them have had side effects or the desired effect has not been achieved clinically.
Nasal mucosa route has been studied for drug administration and for vaccines application in recent years using peptides/proteins or genetic structure materials. Among the advantages reported on this material, due to the nature of these ingredients, it is susceptible to enzymatic degradation processes, so its half-life is very short. In addition, they are not able to easily cross the mucous membranes of the body or the biological membranes. This led to the research and development of nanocarriers as coadyuvants, to protect these materials and give them more stability.
Research shows that mucosal vaccination has advantages over intramuscular immunization when it comes to provides mucosal protection, probably the most important of them is the fact that intranasal administration induces humoral and cellular immunity, which allows immunization at different mucosal sites as well as nasal mucosa, as well as systemic protection.