Commercial Opportunities Created by New Vaccine Adjuvant Technologies

Introduction O f all medical innovations, vaccines have had by far the greatest impact in reducing the morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases. Although antigens have always been the lead products of the vaccine industry, over the last decade adjuvants have received far greater attention. The first vaccine adjuvants were developed in the 1920’s, when it was found that addition of irritant substances such as aluminum hydroxide (alum) or mineral oil enhanced vaccine immunogenicity. Thereafter, many different substances were tested for their ability to enhance the effectiveness of bacterial and toxin antigens including agar, saponin, lecithin, starch-oil, and tapioca. Needless to say, although many of these compounds had adjuvant effects when tested in animals, most of them were highly reactogenic and poorly tolerated and thereby deemed unsuitable for human use. This has left alum as the dominant adjuvant in vaccines right up to this day. Killed or live-attenuated organisms used in older vaccines contain high levels of contaminants that evoke a strong inflammatory response, which in turn enhances adaptive immune responses, such that they generally don’t need an additional adjuvant. However, because of the reactogenicity of such older style vaccines, vaccine manufacture has shifted to highly purified antigens (split and subunit antigens). The consequence is that these Commercial Opportunities Created by New Vaccine Adjuvant Technologies