New Properties of Potential Vaccine Adjuvant Discovered

Lipids may become an important new class of adjuvants not only because of their intrinsic properties but also because of their capacity to activate NKT cells.

New research from the US laboratory of Dr Elizabeth Leadbetter at the Trudeau Institute, Saranac Lake, New York, may lead to a whole new class of vaccines. Dr Leadbetter's lab has discovered new properties of a potential vaccine adjuvant that suggest it could be useful for enhancing protection against a number of different infections.

Effective vaccines train our bodies to recognise harmful microbes and typically contain disabled microbes, or even just components of microbes called antigens. Most human vaccines also contain adjuvants -- substances added to the vaccine to improve immune response to the antigens. Adjuvants increase the strength of the immune response and also allow for smaller amounts of antigens to be used in vaccine production.

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