Staff report — Tulane University and partner organizations; compiled from university and foundation releases, partner press materials, and global polio eradication updates.
The Tulane School of Medicine’s immunology group has received philanthropic backing to accelerate development of a next-generation oral polio vaccine that aims to reduce transmission risk and expand needle-free immunization options worldwide. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed roughly $1.65 million to support the project, which pairs Tulane’s adjuvant platform with an oral saponin delivery system developed in collaboration with biotechnology partner Q-Vant Biosciences.
The grant, announced in mid-2025 in the Gates Foundation committed grants database and publicized by Tulane, is intended to further research into a non-live polio vaccine delivered orally — either as a liquid or a fast-dissolving tablet — that could trigger mucosal immunity in the gut and limit virus shedding and community spread. Researchers say the approach draws on a combined adjuvant strategy designed to protect vaccine antigens from gastrointestinal degradation and to encourage a targeted immune response in gut-associated lymphoid tissue.
Dr. Elizabeth B. Norton, the Tulane associate professor leading the project, described the award as a key step toward a safer oral option with lower reversion risk than current live-attenuated oral polio vaccines. She explained that the Tulane adjuvant platform, used in combination with Q-Vant’s oral saponin formulation, provides a mechanism to deliver non-live antigens to mucosal surfaces while achieving a protective immune response. This combination approach builds on previous Tulane investigations into dmLT, a modified bacterial toxin adjuvant that has shown promise for mucosal immunization.
According to the Tulane release, the adjuvant system under development incorporates a saponin-based component derived from the soapbark tree (Quillaja saponaria) and a modified bacterial protein that together form a delivery vehicle to guide vaccine components through the gut lining. The intent is to pair that delivery system with non-live vaccine antigens — which historically have a lower risk of reverting to virulence — in order to both protect recipients and curb fecal-oral transmission in communities.
Q-Vant Biosciences, the industry partner named in the Tulane announcement, has publicly discussed its QS-Oral™ saponin adjuvant and its role in making saponin formulations suitable for oral administration. Q-Vant’s public materials highlight the company’s work on creating vesicle structures around saponins to stabilize them through the digestive tract and allow adjuvants to reach active mucosal immune sites. The Tulane partnership intends to test such formulations in combination with Tulane’s dmLT to see whether the two adjuvants together produce stronger mucosal responses than either adjuvant alone.
Why oral delivery matters
Oral vaccines offer significant logistical and immunological advantages. By targeting the mucosal surfaces of the gut, oral vaccines can generate local immunity where enteric pathogens—like poliovirus—replicate and shed; that local response can be crucial to reducing onward transmission in communities. Oral delivery also eliminates the need for syringes, reduces the logistical burden of trained vaccinators and cold-chain requirements in some cases, and supports large-scale campaigns in low-resource settings. These advantages have long made oral vaccines a central component of mass immunization strategies.
However, developing non-live oral vaccines has been challenging because protein antigens and many adjuvants degrade in the mouth and stomach before reaching the immune tissues of the gut. The Tulane–Q-Vant project aims to overcome those barriers by using a two-part adjuvant/delivery platform that protects antigens and channels them to responsive mucosal surfaces. If successful, that platform could be applied to multiple diseases beyond polio.
Technical approach and prior research
Tulane’s prior work with dmLT — a modified heat-labile enterotoxin derivative that functions as a mucosal adjuvant — laid the groundwork for the current program. In 2024 Tulane reported a contract from NIAID to explore oral vaccine platforms, and the lab’s publications and prior NIH work indicate an interest in pairing dmLT with complementary excipients and adjuvants to enhance mucosal delivery. The new Gates grant appears to be focused specifically on adding a saponin-based oral delivery system to that toolkit and rigorously testing it with non-live polio antigens.
Experts in oral vaccine research emphasize that adjuvants that can create protective vesicles or microstructures around antigens — enabling transit through stomach acid and proteases — are essential to success. The QS-Oral approach publicly described by Q-Vant aims to generate such structures using saponins and thus to stabilize delivery. Combining that sorcery of delivery with an immune-potentiating molecule like dmLT is the core scientific hypothesis behind the Tulane effort.
Global context: polio eradication and why innovation matters
Polio eradication remains a top priority for major philanthropic and public health organizations. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a long-standing funder of eradication activities, including surveillance, outbreak response, and vaccine development. In 2025, major partners reaffirmed funding and commitments to close remaining gaps in surveillance and vaccination to prevent resurgence. Innovations that could produce safer oral vaccines with reduced reversion risk are seen as valuable because live-attenuated oral vaccines, while effective at inducing mucosal immunity, carry a small risk of vaccine-derived poliovirus in under-immunized populations. New non-live oral approaches could combine the mucosal benefits of OPV with the safety profile of inactivated or non-replicating antigens.
That context helps explain why a philanthropic funder would invest in a relatively small, targeted award to explore adjuvants and formulations: the work is upstream, proof-of-concept research intended to inform larger trials or broader platform development that could later be deployed in campaigns. For implementation partners and global immunization programs, the ideal outcome is an oral product that interrupts transmission without the live virus reversion risk.
Potential benefits and challenges ahead
- Benefit — Transmission blocking: An effective oral non-live vaccine that induces mucosal immunity could reduce virus shedding and transmission, a vital feature for eradication campaigns. The Tulane project explicitly targets this goal by combining adjuvants that act at mucosal surfaces. :contentReference[oaicite:26]{index=26}
- Benefit — Safety profile: Using non-live antigens reduces the theoretical risk of vaccine-derived poliovirus reversion, addressing one of the primary safety concerns with current OPV.
- Challenge — Oral stabilization: Protein antigens and many adjuvants are susceptible to degradation in the digestive tract; success depends on robust delivery vehicles and protective microstructures like those Q-Vant is designing.
- Challenge — Efficacy vs. live vaccines: Live attenuated vaccines are very effective at inducing mucosal immunity; non-live platforms must reach at least comparable mucosal antibody levels to be a practical substitute in campaigns. Preclinical and early clinical results will determine viability. :contentReference[oaicite:29]{index=29}
- Challenge — Development pathway: Vaccine development is iterative and requires preclinical testing, formulation optimization, animal studies, and phased human clinical trials; even with promising preclinical results, the path to widespread program use can be years.
Funding size and what it supports
The Gates Foundation committed $1,648,238 to the Tulane project in July 2025, listing the purpose as supporting polio eradication by exploring new adjuvants and oral routes of administration that might add transmission-blocking properties to non-live polio virus-like particles (VLPs). That committed amount is modest compared with large efficacy trials, indicating the funding is targeted toward research and platform optimization rather than late-stage clinical trials. The Tulane release frames the award as a continuation of a broader program of research into oral adjuvants and delivery strategies.
Small, targeted grants like this are typical at the stage where academic labs and small biotech partners evaluate formulation strategies, perform preclinical testing, and prepare the data package necessary to seek larger translational funds or industry partnerships for clinical development.
What to watch next — milestones and likely timeline
Over the next 12–36 months, the project’s near-term milestones are likely to include: laboratory optimization of the adjuvant combination, formulation stability testing (liquid and tablet forms), preclinical immunogenicity studies in animal models to measure mucosal and systemic responses, and safety profiling. If preclinical data are encouraging, the team would seek larger translational funding and regulatory advice to design first-in-human trials. Each of these steps has established scientific and regulatory checkpoints that shape timelines and decision points.
Partners and global health agencies will track whether the platform produces robust mucosal neutralizing antibody responses and reduces virus shedding in preclinical models — two critical signals for moving to human testing. Because eradication campaigns operate on decades of infrastructure and policy, even promising vaccine technologies must clear scientific, manufacturing, policy, and financing hurdles before field deployment.
Voices and institutional context
Dr. Norton positioned the work as a step toward creating a “safe, easy-to-administer vaccine that not only protects individuals from disease but also helps stop the virus from spreading in communities.” Her remarks in the Tulane announcement emphasize the project’s dual goals of safety and transmission control, aligning with funders’ interest in tools that accelerate eradication while reducing program risk.
Tulane’s Norton lab has previously collaborated with Q-Vant and received NIH support for oral vaccine platform work, indicating this award builds on an existing partnership and technical base rather than representing a new research direction. The continuity of funding and collaboration increases the likelihood that preclinical work can proceed efficiently toward clear go/no-go milestones.
Broader implications for vaccine technology
Success in creating an oral delivery platform for non-live antigens would have implications beyond polio. Mucosal vaccines are a research priority for many infectious threats that enter through mucosa (intestinal, respiratory, or urogenital). A validated adjuvant and delivery system that preserves antigens and stimulates strong mucosal immunity could be repurposed for other vaccine targets, potentially simplifying vaccination strategies in resource-limited settings and facilitating mass immunization campaigns without syringes.
Conclusion
The Gates Foundation’s roughly $1.65 million committed grant to Tulane University supports targeted, proof-of-concept work to develop a next-generation oral polio vaccine using Tulane’s adjuvant platform combined with Q-Vant’s oral saponin delivery system. The award funds research to test whether combining dmLT and QS-Oral formulations can protect non-live antigens through the gastrointestinal tract and elicit mucosal immunity capable of limiting poliovirus transmission. The effort builds on Tulane’s prior NIH-supported oral vaccine research and reflects global funders’ continuing interest in safe, transmission-blocking vaccine innovations that could accelerate polio eradication. Progress will require successful preclinical results, formulation stability, and eventual clinical evaluation, but the collaboration represents a focused investment in a potentially useful tool for the final stages of the eradication effort.
