Surprisingly, some vaccines require additional supplements. The addition of an adjuvant can enhance the immunological response induced by vaccines, better preparing the body to combat a virus.

In a new study published in ACS Infectious Diseases, researchers describe a substance that increased the immune response to an experimental COVID-19 shot in mice by 25 times compared to injection with the vaccine alone.

Despite the fact that the first COVID-19 shots licensed in the United States make use of cutting-edge genetic technologies, the tried-and-true technique of employing proteins derived from the pathogen can yield vaccines that are simpler to store and have lower production costs.

Only Novavax’s protein-based vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 has been approved by the FDA so far.

However, many of the vaccines against various diseases that are already on the market rely on proteins or fragments of proteins, and these shots include adjuvants to boost their effectiveness.

Scientists have discovered that molecules made from a compound found in marine sponges called α-galactosylceramide (αGC) can act as adjuvants by boosting a small group of immune cells that are important for protecting the body from viral infections.

Rui Luo, Zheng Liu, and their coworkers wanted to see if they could make a version of GC that would make the immune response to a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine much stronger.

The group created four GC analogs, and each was introduced to an experimental vaccination that also contained a portion of the spike protein that SARS-CoV-2 employs to infect cells.

Researchers gave mice three doses over 29 days and monitored their immunological response for 35 days. To figure out how the adjuvants worked, they looked at different parts of how the immune system works.

For example, there are two ways the immune system gets rid of pathogens: antibodies, which attach to invaders, and T cells, which kill diseased cells.

None of the four significantly improved the T cell response, but each of them produced antibodies that were substantially more effective at blocking the virus.

The analog GC-CPOEt produced antibodies with the highest neutralizing potential, which was 25 times higher than what the vaccine could produce on its own.

According to the researchers, these findings imply that αGC-CPOEt should be further researched as a viable adjuvant to combat COVID-19 and other infectious disorders.

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