BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Tied to the Mast

May 15, 2008 7:00 AM UTC

Long-lasting, nontoxic adjuvants that enhance the often weak or insufficient immune response from nasal vaccines have been hard to find.1 A paper in Nature Medicine now suggests that small molecule mast cell activators might function as intranasal vaccine adjuvants to enhance the antigen-specific immune response.2 But given the role of mast cell activation in allergy and asthma, some companies question whether such activators can be used as adjuvants without causing inflammatory or anaphylactic reactions.3

The paper, by Duke University Medical Center researchers, built on previous work in the same lab that showed that tumor necrosis factor (TNF) released from mast cells is necessary for lymphocyte recruitment to draining lymph nodes, a process essential for adaptive host defense.4...