Adjuvants key to biotech vaccines

A decade ago, interest in vaccines languished as liability issues drove most companies out of the business. But the resolution of those issues, the advent of AIDS and the return of tuberculosis have stimulated renewed interest in vaccines. And the development of recombinant technology and subunit vaccines, which do not by themselves stimulate a sufficient immune response, has sparked a new interest in adjuvants.

An adjuvant can be any substance that provokes the body to mount an immune response. Yet despite the importance of adjuvants in generating an immune response to an antigen, companies with major adjuvant programs have been poorly understood by Wall Street and there are no pure play adjuvant companies. Only three companies have widely known adjuvant programs: Cambridge Biotech Corp. (CBCX), CytRx Corp. (CYTR) and Ribi ImmunoChem Research Inc. (RIBI). ...