• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.131-142
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• 2004

In recent years, adjuvants have received much attention because of the development of purified subunit and synthetic vaccines which are poor immunogens and require adjuvants to evoke the immune response. Therefore, immunologic adjuvants have been developed and testing for most of this century. During the last years much progress has been made on development, isolation and chemical synthesis of alternative adjuvants such as derivatives of muramyl dipeptide, monophosphoryl lipid A, liposomes, QS-21, MF-59 and immunostimulating complexes (ISCOMS). Biodegradable polymer microspheres are being evaluated for targeting antigens on mucosal surfaces and for controlled release of vaccines with an aim to reduce the number of doses required for primary immunization. The most common adjuvants for human use today are aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate. Calcium phosphate and oil emulsions have been also used in human vaccination. The biggest issue with the use of adjuvants for human vaccines is the toxicity and adverse side effects of most of the adjuvant formulations. Other problems with the development of adjuvants include restricted adjuvanticity of certain formulations to a few antigens, use of aluminum adjuvants as reference adjuvant preparations under suboptimal conditions, non-availability of reliable animal models, use of non-standard assays and biological differences between animal models and humans leading to the failure of promising formulations to show adjuvanticity in clinical trials. The availability of hundreds of different adjuvants has prompted a need for identifying rational standards for selection of adjuvant formulations based on safety and sound immunological principles for human vaccines. The aim of the present review is to put the recent findings into a broader perspective to facilitate the application of these adjuvants in general and experimental vaccinology.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1789-1794
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• 2011

Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells playing key roles in immune sentinels as initiators of T-cell responses against microbial pathogens and tumors. Sarijang, a folk sauce containing extracts of Rhynchosia nulubilis, Ulmus davidiana roots, Allium sativum, and Rhus Verniaiflura bark, has been used as a nonspecific immunostimulant for cancer patients. However, little is known about its immunomodulating effects or their mechanisms. In this study, we investigated whether sarijang induces phenotypic and functional maturation of DCs. For this study, murine bone marrow-derived myeloid DCs were cultured in the presence of interleukin-4 (IL-4) and granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and the generated immature DCs were stimulated with sarijang or lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Our data indicated that sarijang significantly enhanced the expression of co-stimulatory molecules (CD80 and CD86) as well as major histocompatibility complex (MHC) II, as did LPS. The results provide new insight into the immunopharmacology of sarijang and suggest a novel approach to the manipulation of DC for therapeutic application.