ViVa feature of the week: beyond lipid nanoparticles — the next generation of vaccine platforms

DNA origami takes aim at the post-LNP future — and the early results are striking For more than three years, lipid nanoparticles have been the dominant story in vaccine delivery science. They rescued the mRNA platform, enabled the fastest vaccine rollouts in history, and are now being adapted for RSV, influenza, HIV, and cancer immunotherapy. But LNPs are not perfect. Bulk material for long-term storage still requires ultra-cold storage; they are metabolically cleared quickly, their ionizable lipid components can trigger local and systemic inflammation, and their antigen-loading efficiency can be inconsistent across manufacturing batches. The question in vaccinology labs right now is: how can we do better – what comes next? One answer — still pre-clinical, but gaining traction — is DNA origami. In a paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering in March 2026, a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported...