The ABC of clinical and experimental adjuvants--a brief overview

Richard Brunner1, Erika Jensen-Jarolim, Isabella Pali-Schöll

  • 1Department of Pathophysiology, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, AKH-EB 03.Q, Vienna, Austria.

Immunology Letters
|November 10, 2009
PubMed

Adjuvants are compounds that can increase and/or modulate the intrinsic immunogenicity of an antigen and elicit strong and long lasting immune responses. During the last 80 years many adjuvants have been used in experimental settings, but due to various shortcomings of most of them only aluminum compounds made it into regular clinical usage. However, during the last years promising candidates have arisen that may finally adjunct or displace aluminum substances as main adjuvant. This review summarizes information on adjuvants currently used in clinical as well as in experimental settings.

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