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0:00
I'm Derek O'Hagan.
I work for GSK Vaccines.
I research in Cambridge.
I'm going to be talking
about vaccine adjuvants.
Although I'm an employee
of GSK Vaccines,
the presentation I'm
going to make really
reflects my experience
across a number of companies,
and it doesn't really
express the policy of GSK.
0:23
So in trying to define vaccine
adjuvants and what they are,
it's not an easy task to accomplish.
Essentially, they are
defined by what they do.
They enhance the immune
response to a vaccine antigen.
So since there's no
clear definition,
there are many, many diverse
substances in the literature that
have been described
as vaccine adjuvants,
particularly in a
pre-clinical setting.
If we try to understand a little
better those that have progressed
to clinical trials, we can
get a better appreciation
of some of the materials,
because a smaller
percentage of advanced trials.
And even a very small
percentage of these
have eventually been included
in licensed vaccines.
And these are the
adjuvants I'm mostly going
to focus on for obvious reasons.
It's a very diverse area.
There many materials, but
I'm going to focus on those
that have been most advanced.
1:13
Moving on, it's perhaps
good to see which
vaccines actually need adjuvants.
So some vaccines do need them
and some vaccines really do not.
So for example, a live
attenuated vaccine
that's able to replicate once
it's administered generally
does not need an adjuvant.
And it's able to
introduce, inherently,
a broad range of immune responses,
both T cells, CD4, CD8s, and antibodies.
Also killed whole
bacterial or viral vaccines
often do not need adjuvants.
Essentially they contain
many components that
are inherently immunostimulatory.
So often they do not need adjuvants.
Where adjuvants really become
necessary and key components of
vaccines are recombinant subunits.
So protein based vaccines,
which tend to be inherently
not particularly
potent, and so really
do need adjuvants to induce potent,
long-term immune responses that can
then mediate protective immunity.
And subunit vaccines tend to induce
antibody responses and CD4 T cells.
