Background

Adjuvant - Any substance used in combination with a specific antigen that produces a more robust immune response than the antigen alone.  (Latin adjuvare - to help)

Adjuvants have been used since the early 20th Century to enhance an immune response to an antigen.  The need for adjuvants as a component of vaccines is still acute, especially as newer antigens may be weak immunogens or have limited availability.  The role and type of adjuvant must be critically tested and assessed in order to produce an effective vaccine - one that elicits a protective antibody response when the host is challenged with the antigen.   To provide protection, the antibody response must be of sufficient duration, sufficient affinity for the antigen, as well as appropriate subtype(s) of antibodies. 

The most commonly used adjuvants act by providing a long-lived cache of antigen, which counteracts the typical characteristic of rapid clearance and degradation of free antigen.  Adjuvants of this type are aluminum-based compounds, Freund's incomplete adjuvant (emulsion of oil and water), and microparticles.  Other adjuvants activate white blood cells, including macrophages and dendritic cells, which among other functions take up and present antigen to lymphocytes, and T cells that are required to help B cells produce antibodies.  Many of the adjuvants that stimulate immune cells are obtained from bacteria, such as bacterial lipopolysaccharide (Explanations about immune responses can be found in any basic textbook on Immunology or in the on-line course on Cellular and Molecular Immunolgy at MIT.)

Consideration of what adjuvant to use also must take into account the concomitant negative effects of adjuvants.  Many of the adjuvants lead to undesireable inflammatory outcomes.  Most readers are familiar with "flu-like" symptoms or swelling and tenderness at the injection site occurring after a vaccination.  Reducing the systemic and local unwanted effects while still providing maximal or optimal enhancement of an immune response is especially important and may drive much of the research and development of new, improved adjuvants.

In view of significant, on-going interest in and need for adjuvants and their relevance to vaccines, this patent landscape was undertaken.  As a first step to delineating and dissecting the landscape, we present here a high altitude view of world-wide patents and applications.

Image courtesy of CDC (Center for Disease Control, U.S.) and obtained from Public Image Library.

The information contained in this page was believed to be correct at the time it was collated. New patents and patent applications, altered status of patents, and case law may have resulted in changes in the landscape. CAMBIA makes no warranty that it is correct or up to date at this time and accepts no liability for any use that might be made of it. Corrections or updates to the information are welcome. Please send an email to info@bios.net.

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