Tattooing Improves Response to DNA Vaccine

Tattooing is a more effective way of delivering DNA vaccines than intramuscular injection, reports a new study.

Researchers at the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany) examined delivery of a DNA vaccine antigen by tattooing the skin of mice, comparing it with standard intramuscular injection. The researchers used a coat protein from human papillomavirus (HPV, the cause of cervical cancer) as a model and tested it both with, and without, the molecular adjuvants that are often given to boost immune response.

The researchers found that the tattoo method gave a stronger humoral response and cellular response than intramuscular injection, even when adjuvants were included in the latter. Three doses of DNA vaccine that were given by tattooing produced at least 16 times higher antibody levels than three intramuscular injections with adjuvant. The adjuvants enhanced the effect of intramuscular injection, but not of tattooing. The study was published on February 8, 2008, in the online open access journal Genetic Vaccines and Therapy.

"Vaccination with naked DNA has been hampered by its low efficiency,” said lead author Dr. Martin Müller, Ph.D. "Delivery of DNA via tattooing could be a way for a more widespread commercial application of DNA vaccines.”

Tattooing is an invasive procedure done with a solid vibrating needle, causing a wound and sufficient inflammation to ‘prime' the immune system. It also covers a bigger area of the skin than an injection, so the DNA vaccine can enter more cells. These effects may account for the stronger immune response arising from introducing a DNA vaccine into the body by tattooing. The researchers believe that tattooing could have a role in routine vaccination of cattle or in delivering therapeutic (rather than prophylactic) vaccines to humans.


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German Cancer Research Center