Development of antigen-specific T cells in mediastinal lymph nodes after intranasal immunization

The power of cholera toxin (CT) as an effective mucosal adjuvant is well established. Because of the high toxicity of CT, its clinical use is unlikely. Therefore, the need to identify effective and non toxic mucosal adjuvants for human use is important. For this purpose, CT is largely used as a reference molecule for testing the efficacy of new candidate adjuvants in animal models. Here, we evaluated the kinetics and the localization of antigen-specific humoral and cellular immune responses elicited by intranasal immunization with tetanus toxoid antigen in the presence of CT. We show that an antigen-specific cellular immune response localized in the mediastinal lymph nodes can be observed already 1 week after the first immunization. The induction of an appreciable titer of an antibody-specific immune response was assessed after two immunizations. Therefore, we suggest that the efficacy of new candidate mucosal adjuvants can be tested by evaluating the cellular immune response in the mediastinal lymph nodes at early stages of immunization.