Adjuvants for foot-and-mouth disease virus vaccines: recent progress

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious and rapidly spreading disease of cloven-hoofed animals. In most countries, animals are immunized with inactivated whole virus vaccines to control the spread of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV); however, there are safety and efficacy (especially, cell-mediated immunity) concerns. Many efforts are currently devoted to the development of effective vaccines by combining the application of protective antigens together with the search for specific and targeting adjuvants that maximizes the immunogenicity with a desired immune response. In this review, we outline previous studies performed with both traditional adjuvants as well as the most promising new generation adjuvants such as ligands for Toll-like receptors (TLRs) or different cytokines, focusing mostly on their efficacy when used with FMD vaccine, and somewhat on mechanisms by which adjuvants mediate their effects.