Innocuity and toxicity testing of non-viral components of foot-and-mouth disease vaccines

Some biological properties of 3 different adjuvants: saponin, DEAE-dextran and sodium azide applied in foot-and-mouth vaccines have been studied. As tested in guinea pigs, by dialysis of various batches of saponin, the author succeeded in reducing their toxicity by 80 to 90%, their hemolytic activity by 60 to 75% and their inflammatory capacity by 40 to 50%, whereas in cattle the inflammatory capacity of dialyzed saponin batches decreased by 80 to 90%. The inflammatory capacity of DEAE-dextran is about 50 to 60% less than that of the saponin. The effect of saponin and sodium azide has directly been studied in virus suspension also. Neither the saponin nor the sodium azide affected adversely the infectivity and immunogenicity of the antigen. The loss of potency due to the storage of the vaccine is not in relationship with the presence of the two above-named components.