9/21/2026
VaxiDermis was created by a student team from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. The new vaccine patch is designed to sustain effectiveness under difficult environmental and healthcare conditions –– a potentially important solution for communities where refrigeration and trained healthcare workers may be difficult to access.
A new approach to delivering malaria vaccines is moving closer to making disease prevention more accessible in under-resourced communities around the world. The innovation, called VaxiDermis, aims to address one of the most pressing challenges in global health.
“The goal is to work toward eliminating the need for refrigeration as well as enabling minimally invasive delivery.”
Sonokshi Nag, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore student.
Malaria affects nearly 249 million people a year, causing more than 600,000 deaths, mostly among children in Africa. Rising global temperatures could increase the threat of malaria, while vaccine refrigeration requirements create additional barriers to access, especially in remote regions where vaccines can be difficult to deliver.
VaxiDermis was created by a student team from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. The team brought its innovation to the 2026 Global Summit of the Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine (GCIEM).
The new vaccine patch is designed to sustain effectiveness under difficult environmental and healthcare conditions –– a potentially important solution for communities where refrigeration and trained healthcare workers may be difficult to access.
The team is developing a thermostable malaria vaccine delivery platform using dissolvable microneedles embedded in a patch. The approach is designed to stabilize vaccine components in a dry matrix, reducing their vulnerability to heat-driven degradation and potentially decreasing reliance on continuous refrigeration. The patch-based delivery method could also reduce the need for trained personnel to administer vaccines by injection.
VaxiDermis team member and NTU medical student Sonokshi Nag says the need for new approaches to malaria prevention is becoming more urgent as a changing climate threatens to compound existing healthcare disparities. “We believe that climate change is going to be a real driving factor in the progression of malaria,” Nag said.
The approach addresses two significant barriers to vaccine delivery: the cold-chain gaps that exist in Africa and the lack of trained injectors. “The goal is to work toward eliminating the need for refrigeration as well as enabling minimally invasive delivery,” Nag said.
VaxiDermis, formerly known as VaxiPatch, earned third place and $30,000 at the 2026 GCIEM Global Summit in Taipei, Taiwan. The international competition challenges student innovators to develop engineering-driven solutions to some of the most pressing problems in global health.
Since taking the stage in Taipei, the VaxiDermis team has been putting its $30,000 award to work, focusing on a fundamental question: How can the microneedle patch be optimized to provide a strong foundation for a thermostable malaria vaccine?
The team is now refining the materials and design of its microneedle patch to prepare for testing with a key malaria vaccine protein. Researchers have obtained materials that will help form and stabilize the vaccine within the patch and are preparing for the next stage of laboratory studies.
A series of experiments has already helped the team improve the tiny, dissolvable needles that make up the patch. Researchers tested different materials and concentrations, examining the microneedles under a microscope to determine which combinations produced the strongest and most consistent structures without cracks, bending, or other defects.
Based on those results, the team identified promising formulations using hyaluronic acid and pullulan, two materials used to create the microneedles. Researchers will next fine-tune the amount of trehalose, an ingredient that can help protect and stabilize the vaccine.
Once the formulation is optimized, the team plans to incorporate a protein from the malaria parasite that is targeted by the vaccine and test its stability at different temperatures. This will help researchers determine whether VaxiDermis can protect important vaccine components from heat — a critical step toward developing a malaria vaccine delivery system that could reduce reliance on refrigeration in communities where maintaining a reliable cold chain is difficult.
The work marks the transition from optimizing the physical microneedle platform to testing its potential to preserve a vaccine antigen.
For the VaxiDermis team, each step forward brings the possibility of expanding access to malaria vaccination in hard-to-reach communities. By designing a vaccine delivery system around challenges such as extreme temperatures, limited refrigeration, and shortages of trained healthcare workers, the team hopes to make malaria protection more accessible where it is needed most.
Media Contact:
United States: Ryann Monahan, Executive Director, Marketing and Communications, Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine | ryann@illinois.edu
Singapore: Yusuf Ali, PhD, Ong Tiong Tat Chair Professor of Metabolic Research, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine Executive Council | yusuf.ali@ntu.edu.sg