Michael Schrader, CEO and Co-Founder of Vaxess, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how they are creating vaccine patches similar to nicotine patches, and what this means for vaccine access and distribution. 

Cheddar Innovates

How These Patches Can Become The Needle-Free Future of Vaccines

Welcome back to cheddar innovates brought to you by curiosity stream Now, vaccines have been making headlines just about every day for the past few years. But what we don't all know about them are the logistical challenges that come with shipping and storage of access is a venture capital and Gates foundation backed company developing vaccine patches for a needle free future of vaccines. And joining us now is Michael Schrader, Ceo and co founder of Access. Thank you so much for joining us. I first have to ask you about this needle free future. I have so many friends and family that had to overcome fears in order to get vaccinated fears of needles. How are you making this future of needle free vaccines of reality? Well, thanks first off, thanks for having me. Certainly excited to be here. I think there are two realities that we see. First off, no one likes needles. Second off, no one likes going to the doctor. So the thought of basically taking away needle and syringe and replacing it with something that looks like a nicotine patch is really compelling. We do that with a system that we call mimics and it's got a small applicator contains a patch on the inside, essentially that applicator is held in the forearm, click the button, it deploys the patch onto the skin. You wear the patch for five minutes, take it off and throw it away and you've gotten your vaccination. So pain free can be shipped directly your home so you can do it for your living room. That is incredible. So you only actually wear the patch for about five minutes. Break down exactly what the science is behind it. How is it absorbed into the skin? Is there anything else that people would need to know? Are there certain ways you've got to prep your skin or certain requirements before you have the vaccine? In this way? It's a great question. So, you know, if you think of a traditional nicotine patch, we're all familiar with that. The challenges if you took a vaccine and put it in a nicotine patch and stuck it on your skin, the vaccine is too large to actually get into the skin so the skin surface is not for us enough to let it in. So basically the design of this patch is that it barely disrupts the surface of your skin when it's applied to allow those molecules to go into the skin. So we'll have patients do the exact same thing they do with the traditional vaccine. We'll have them do a quick alcohol swab just to clean the area, apply the patch where it for a couple of minutes. Again, just barely breaks the surface of the skin, gets those vaccines into the skin and then the patches taken off and thrown away. You go back to your normal life. And at that point the vaccines in your body doing what it does best. I really feel like the future is now. And I'm wondering what are some of the biggest challenges that this could potentially solve when it comes to vaccine access and also distribution. Yeah. So we all just lived through the worst pandemic in 100 years, Right. And the great irony to me was that the way that we overcame that great pandemic was by asking people to congregate at mass vaccination sites to get their vaccines. And so the challenge with that, of course, is when you bring a bunch of people together, you can create additional spreader events. So the dream for us really is for, you know, the next pandemic to enable those vaccines to be mailed directly to you at home. So you can self apply in the comfort of your own home. It's more convenient for patients. And it also reduces the spread that was actually occurring at many of these vaccination campaigns. So the pandemic response is the first, the second for us is our lead product, is actually looking at seasonal flu. So, you know, one of the interesting things we found is particularly young working adults believe in the flu vaccine. They understand the importance of it. They simply don't take time out of their schedule to go get it. So now we've got an opportunity, it shows up on your doorstep, smacking your arm for five minutes in the living room and you're protected from a global standpoint. One of the biggest challenges in getting vaccines to remote parts of the world is the fact that every vaccine has to be refrigerated or frozen. So if we can take away the need for that and take away the need for a trained health care professional in the end and take away the challenge of getting rid of used needles and syringes so they're not reused. It's a pretty compelling opportunity to really ensure global vaccine access for every man, woman child around the world. Yeah, this sounds like a major development, especially as we know, this has been and continues to be a global fight and a lot of scientists out there predicting we could face future pandemics unfortunately. So I'm wondering what kind of vaccines your team is currently working on. Yeah, so our main focus is aimed at flu and Covid vaccines to start. But the beauty of this technology is that will work for any molecule. So we're not just limited vaccines. We chose to start there because we saw it as this huge area of need. But there's an opportunity to think long term about bringing other products out of the clinic and into the home. Everything from oncology to skin diseases to gene therapy can be delivered with this patch. So it's pretty exciting to think about the future potential. What we saw with Covid is. You know, everyone now is familiar with doing home based infectious disease testing at home. And if you ask anybody if they'd rather do a nasal swab at home or go to the doctor to get the nasal swab. You're going to get a pretty crystal clear answer. We think there's a future pathway here for a whole host of drugs that currently require trips the doctor's office to be moved into the home. And you know, we're pretty excited to be one of the technologies that we think will enable that. Incredible to hear about some of those other applications in the future. Oncology, gene therapy and some other drugs. Also wondering what your timeline is looking like for when we could possibly see a needle free future when it comes to vaccines. Yeah. So we're targeting first product launch in 2028. So we're still a couple of years away. And the biggest challenge, quite frankly is manufacturing this patch is pretty complex. No one else can do it. So we've got to build a lot of that manufacturing infrastructure to to make sure we can support that. The second challenge for us is it's a, it's a complex clinical trial and regulatory pathway. So the nice thing about vaccines, every vaccine that we get has been tested on tens if not hundreds, of thousands of patients before it's rolled out of the public. So we have a crystal clear, understanding the safety profile, honestly believe vaccines are the safest products in the world because of that, because of the millions upon millions of people that they're administered too. So we've got some work to do to, you know, convince ourselves convince the FDA and certainly convince the american public that this is just a safe of a way to get vaccines. Is the traditional needle and syringe. Well, congratulations on all you've built so far in this pathway forward. That's Michael, Schrader, Ceo and co founder of Access.