Approaches to increase or tailor immune responses towards protein vaccine antigens

What is it about?

This review describes methods that enable the attachment of immunostimulatory adjuvants onto recombinant protein antigens. The review focuses specifically on protein adjuvants, which can be directly expressed as fusion proteins with antigens, allowing simple access to antigen-adjuvant fusion proteins. These protein adjuvants are flagellin, bacterial lipoproteins, heat shock proteins, and extra domain A of fibronectin (EDA).

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Why is it important?

Antigen-adjuvant fusions provide a means to greatly improve vaccine potency, providing a dose-sparing effect, and reducing the number of boosts that must be administered to ensure effective immune responses are elicited. They also provide a means to tailor the immune response that is elicited in order to ensure that an appropriate immune response for the disease/pathogen of interest is elicited.