Antibody titers increased nearly 800 times!

Vaccines are generally composed of immunogens and adjuvants and play an important role in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases
.
Among them, adjuvants can help the body to generate an effective and durable immune response to immunogens
.
Recently, a reporter from "Science and Technology Weekly" learned from the research team of Xu Chuan from the State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, that a chiral material can stimulate the potential of vaccines and increase the antibody titer by nearly 800 times.
Vaccines offer new ideas
.
The relevant results have been published in the internationally renowned academic journal "Nature"
.

Aluminum adjuvants have been used in the development of human vaccines since the 1920s
.
However, because the vaccine activity containing aluminum adjuvant components will greatly decrease after freezing and thawing, it has extremely high requirements on production, storage and transportation
.
"Not only that, aluminum adjuvants can only mediate humoral immune responses to produce antibodies, but for pathogens hidden in human cells, antibodies cannot be recognized, so aluminum adjuvants are ineffective against chronic infectious diseases and tumors
.
Chiral adjuvants are ineffective.
The drug can solve this problem
," said Professor Kuang Hua, deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University
.

What is "chirality"? Kuang Hua further explained that human hands are not completely symmetrical, and chirality refers to the property that an object cannot completely coincide with its mirror image.
It is closely related to the functions of molecules such as drugs and proteins
.

"Immune cells are generally stimulated through protein receptors on their surface
.
Since proteins have chirality, if we find a chiral material that matches the protein receptors, can we stimulate immune cells more effectively?" Xu said, Following this line of thought, the team developed a chiral nanomaterial
.
The results showed that the expression of immune cell-related immune factors increased by 1 to 2 times
.
Since then, the researchers further demonstrated that this novel chiral adjuvant can efficiently stimulate both cellular and humoral immunity using the H9N2 influenza virus infection model
.

Finally, a series of experimental results showed that the antibody titer produced by the left-handed immune adjuvant was 800 times that of the traditional aluminum adjuvant and more than 1,580 times that of the right-handed adjuvant
.
With the help of cryo-electron microscopy, flow cytometry and other equipment, researchers have discovered the mechanism by which chiral adjuvants enter immune cells and stimulate immune responses
.

Xu Chuan said that in the past, the research and development of vaccines mainly emphasized the research of candidate antigens or antigen genes.
This time, we started with the chiral design of immune adjuvants.
To a certain extent, we have subverted the traditional concept and realized the transition from "0 to 1".
"The source of innovation
.
At present, from an international perspective, the research and development of therapeutic vaccines, especially antitumor vaccines, has not been satisfactory
.
The chiral immune adjuvant we proposed this time can not only induce humoral immune responses to produce high titer antibodies, but also induce cellular immune responses in a balanced manner
.
"We believe that chiral adjuvants are expected to change the current dominance of preventive vaccines and point the way for the development of therapeutic vaccines
.
"