Edible vaccines should preferably be consumed:
Edible vaccines rely on oral exposure to gut associated lymphoid tissue, so preservation of antigen structural integrity is crucial. Cooking, drying at high temperature, roasting, fermentation involving microbial proteases and acidic boiling denatures protein tertiary structure, unfolding alpha helices and beta sheets, disrupting disulfide bonds essential for conformational B cell epitopes required for neutralizing antibody induction, aggregating proteins into insoluble forms, destroying T cell epitopes via hydrolysis. For example HBsAg virus like particles dissociate into monomers losing part
Ref: Mason et al. 2002 Trends Biotech Edible consumption raw; Streatfield Kwon 2007 Should be raw.
