Everything you need to know about adjuvants in vaccines

Adjuvants, also known as adjuvants, are ingredients that often appear in vaccines besides antigens, additives, preservatives ... with the use of helping vaccines work more effectively.

Currently, many improved vaccines require adjuvants (adjuvants) in the manufacturing process for their benefit to the immune response in the patient's body. Therefore, the development of adjuvants plays a quite important role in the development of advanced vaccines to improve the health of people.

What are excipients in vaccines?

An excipients are an ingredient added to a vaccine to increase the number and control of the immune response in the patient's body. In other words, adjuvants help vaccines work more effectively. Most vaccines today contain only small amounts of bacteria - or more accurately, bacterial proteins - instead of a complete virus or bacteria. Excipients need to be added during the preparation of these vaccines to ensure that the patient's body produces an immune response strong enough to fight the injected pathogens. It can be concluded that the main uses of excipients are:

Accelerates and directs the immune response

Enhance cross-reactivity

Reduce the amount of antigens and the number of injections needed

Some common excipients

Products from pathogens

Some of the ingredients used as excipients in vaccines may be made up of pathogens. These components induce an innate immune response to the vaccine when they target multiple receptors inside or on the surface of innate immune cells. Thus, a longstanding protective layer against the pathogens targeted by the vaccine is established. Some of the ingredients that are being tested and used as adjuvants in today's vaccines include:

Monophosphoryl Lipid A

Poly (I: C)

CpG DNA adjuvant

Emulsion

Excipients in the form of seeds

This type of excipients grows into tiny particles that can stimulate the immune system in the patient's body. Furthermore, these excipients also enhance antigen delivery to immune cells. Here are some examples of granular excipients:

Alum

Virus form

Cytokin

Combination excipients

Combined excipients, such as AS04, are often preferred because they can induce multiple protective immune responses in the patient's body. Furthermore, some excipients have limited use when acting alone, but combining them with many other excipients improves results.

Research on combination excipients is only in its infancy. Scientists and experts are trying to discover how to combine excipients to induce a useful immune response to a given antigen and their function. The ultimate goal of this line of research is to create an "adjuvant toolbox" that can be combined in a variety of ways so that any type of immune response can be induced.

Cases where excipients are not needed

Some vaccines are made from weakened or inactivated bacteria that can induce a strong immune response on its own. In that case, the appearance of excipients is not necessary. In the United States, for example, vaccines against measles , mumps , rubella , chickenpox, rotavirus , polio, and seasonal flu are formulated without the addition of adjuvants.