Vaccinations are rarely painless. But Nikolov's ongoing project on innovative vaccine delivery methods might make painless vaccinations a reality.

"Wouldn't it be great to be vaccinated against hepatitis B by eating some corn puffs?" Nikolov asks with a smile as he unpacks bags of corn puffs stored in a cardboard box in his office. The yellowish- brown corn looks a lot like popcorn, but unlike the popcorn we chomp in movie theatres, these corn puffs contain hepatitis B vaccine.

This work on vaccine corn puffs was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health to Applied Biotechnology Institute Inc., located in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The puffs are currently in pre- clinical trials in animals through a collaboration with the veterinary school at Texas A&M.

Future experiments include testing the corn puffs to confirm that they contain active vaccines - that is, making sure that the vaccine was not destroyed by heat during processing - and determining the amount of vaccine in every kernel.