Mobile website
Archive > Volume 21 Issue 2 > 2014,21(2):192-202. DOI:10.3872/j.issn.1007-385X.2014.02.014 Prev Next
Translational Medicine
Current status and future trends in basic and translational research on immunologic adjuvants
- Article
- Figures
- Metrics
- Preview PDF
- Reference
- Related
- Cited by
- Materials
Abstract:
Immunologic adjuvants are compounds that can help vaccines to enhance or change the antigen-specific immune response. The vast majority of human spontaneous tumors are weakly immunogenic or non-immunogenic. Adjuvants can enhance the immunogenicity of tumor antigens, promote antigen presentation, and induce anti-tumor immune response, thus having important implications in improving the efficacy of cancer biotherapy. Adjuvants can be classified according to their functional properties and the mechanisms underlying their functional activities into three types: immunomodulatory adjuvants, antigen-deliverying adjuvants and adjuvants with immunomodulatory-antigen delivery functions. Aluminum, emulsion, virosome, cholera toxin, CpG ODN and other adjuvants have now been approved for combinational use with human vaccine(s) in clinics or clinical trials. Nevertheless, the currently available adjuvants are associated with some limitations such as suboptimal safety profiles and significant adverse effects, thus prompting for the development of novel types of safer and more efficient vaccines and adjuvants, which is becoming one of the hottest areas of translational research in immunotherapy. This review aims to summarize the characteristics of adjuvants and the mechanisms underlying their effects, present the recent advances and current status in the translational research of adjuvants, and discusse the challenges and possible trends in adjuvant development in the future.
Keywords:
Project Supported:
Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31270913)
Clc Number:
