Yoghurt bacteria could be used to deliver an anthrax vaccine, if Todd Klaenhammer gets his way.

The North Carolina State University researcher has just published a paper in PNAS describing how swallowing a vaccine based on the lactic acid bacteria protected mice against exposure to anthrax. As he notes in his paper the Lactobacillus bacteria can pass through the stomach and are safe in large amounts, making them potentially useful as a vaccine delivery mechanism.

“Normally, you can’t eat vaccines because the digestive process in the stomach destroys them, so vaccines are traditionally administered by needle,” says Klaenhammer (press release). “But using ‘food grade’ lactic acid bacteria as a vehicle provides a safe way of getting the vaccine into the small intestine without losing any of the drug’s efficacy in binding to the dendritic [immune] cells, which can then trigger an immune response.”

Klaenhammer is not the only person working on oral vaccines, and there are a large number currently in development. Way back in 2003, a review article in the American Journal of Drug Delivery noted other people were trying live vectors, transgenic plants, and even “virus-like particles”. An oral polio vaccine is already in use.

Still, anything that avoids needles is great progress. Now all we need to do is convince a vocal minority that vaccines are actually a force for good, any maybe produce this vaccine in a low-fat, raspberry flavour…

“This is eating the good guys,” says Klaenhammer (News and Observer).

The research should be live here soon.