Towards the systematic discovery of immunomodulatory adjuvants

Darren R. Flower*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference outputChapter

Abstract

Adjuvants potentiate immune responses, reducing the amount and dosage of antigen needed for protective immunity. Adjuvants are particularly important when considering subunit, epitope-based, or other more exotic vaccine formulations that lack significant inherent immunogenicity. While innumerable adjuvants are known, only a handful are licensed for human use: principally alum, and squalene-based oil-in-water adjuvants. Alum, the most commonly used, is suboptimal. There are many varieties of adjuvant: proteins, oligonucleotides, drug-like small-molecules, and liposome-based delivery systems with adjuvant activity being perhaps the most prominent. Like poisons, adjuvants function via several mechanisms. Many plausible alternatives have been proposed. Focussing in particular on the discovery of small-molecule adjuvants, in the following we give a brief and fairly synoptic overview of adjuvants and their discovery.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationImmunomic Discovery of Adjuvants and Candidate Subunit Vaccines
PublisherSpringer
Pages155-180
Number of pages26
ISBN (Electronic)9781461450702
ISBN (Print)9781461450696
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2013

Publication series

NameImmunomics Reviews
PublisherSpringer
Volume5

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