What are Adjuvants?

March 29, 2023

A Chinese research team recently created two novel broad-spectrum adjuvants that can dramatically boost the immune response to vaccines using computer-aided molecular design and machine learning.

About Adjuvants:

What is it? An adjuvant is a substance that is added to a vaccine to stimulate and enhance the magnitude and durability of the immune response.
They are commonly used to improve the effectiveness of a vaccine.
Adjuvants allow for lesser quantities of the vaccine and fewer doses.
Generally, they are injected alongside an antigen to help the immune system generate antibodies that fight the antigen.
Adjuvanted vaccines can cause more local reactions (such as redness, swelling, and pain at the injection site) and more systemic reactions (such as fever, chills and body aches) than non-adjuvanted vaccines.
Example: Aluminum adjuvants are used in vaccines such as hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diphtheria-tetanus-containing vaccines etc.