An Overview Of Vaccine Formulation

By Shawn Hunter


Prophylactic vaccines are very vital in prevention of many of the infectious diseases in the world. Currently, only three vaccine types are in use for vaccinating human beings. The first one is the live-attenuated vaccines which have a bacterium or a virus with pathogenicity of low grade compared to the real one. The next is the inactivated ones. This is achieved by use of chemicals or heat while the subunit vaccine formulation is produced from pathogen components.

The goal of vaccinating human beings is enhancing the action to their immune system to resist infectious agents for a quite a duration. For this to be achieved there is need to add some components to the formulations. The work of these adjuvants is to increase the action of vaccines and make them stay in the body for a longer period. However, they should not cause harmful effects to the person.

Adjuvants also enhance the immune action of body antigens. This means that less vaccine shots will be needed and also the efficacy of vaccines will be enhanced. The children and elderly people gain a lot from use of these vaccine formulations.

In general, adjuvants are categorized into two. The first class is the called the vehicles. They include virosomes, liposomes, emulsions and mineral salts which make the antigens in the vaccine to increase the efficiency of body immune system. Also, they control storage and release of antigens so that the specificity of immune responses is increased.

The other class consists of stimulants of immune system. They include agonists, toll-like receptors and MPLs. They work to enhance the function of immune system and increase its responsiveness to antigens which do not belong to the body. They are known to affect the level at which cytokines are produced through activation of intracellular pathways of signaling, MHC molecules and co-stimulatory signals.

Some of the adjuvants which have accepted for use in human beings include MPLs, virus-like particles and virosomes of influenza which have immune-potentiating effects. A combination of MPLs and alum is also commonly used in some regions of the world.

The effectiveness of many of these vaccines has been increased by use of adjuvants. This includes vaccines made for protection against influenza, cancer and hepatitis viruses. T-cells are the main type of cells involved in immune responses. Therefore, the adjuvants should be able to increase and control the T lymphocytes in cytotoxic class. In addition, they should also exploit the TLR in order to affect dendritic cells. All this is made possible because the adjuvants have the ability to bring out the best in these vaccines.

From the studies which have been carried out concerning vaccine formulations, it is clear that there is a need to recognize and develop other adjuvants. This is because the ones in use currently sometimes fail to induce an immune response against the various kinds of target pathogens. This is even worse to the immunocomprised populations and the elderly.




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