[Lipopeptides as adjuvants for the immunisation of laying hens]

Increasing interest on the extraction of specific antibodies from chicken egg yolk rises the question for powerful adjuvants without side effects for the IMMUNISATION of laying hens. The Lipopeptides Pam3Cys-Ser-(Lys)4 (PCSL) showed effective immunostimulating capacity in case of the immunization of chickens with a viral antigen. The specific antibody contents of the sera were comparable to and sometimes even significantly higher than those achieved with complete Freund"s adjuvans (CFA). Considering the immunization of laying hens with recombinant bovine somatotropin, the use of a combination of PCSL with a novel lipopeptide (PCSTH16) for the primary immunization did not result in higher specific antibody titers compared to the groups which received only one adjuvant. The correlation between the contents of specific antibodies in the sera and those of the egg yolks collected a week later were 0.81 (CFA) and 0.86 (PCSL) in case of the viral antigen and between 0.59 and 0.88 with recombinant bovine somatotropin using lipopeptides as adjuvants.