vaccine adjuvant

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a substance added to a vaccine formulation to enhance and modulate the immune response to the antigen, allowing smaller antigen doses to generate protective immunity and producing stronger, longer-lasting immune memory than the antigen alone; adjuvants work by activating innate immune pattern recognition pathways, promoting antigen uptake and presentation by dendritic cells, inducing inflammatory signals at the injection site, and stimulating co-stimulatory molecule expression on antigen-presenting cells; classical adjuvants include aluminium salts, while modern adjuvant systems such as AS01 used in the shingles and malaria vaccines combine multiple immunostimulatory components for precisely tuned responses