Oct 31, 2020 12:01 AM
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201...o-vaccines
EXCERPTS (intro): Scientists add some bizarre things to vaccines, such as aluminium and extracts from shark livers. Many vaccines simply don’t work without them – but no one knows why. In 1925, Gaston Ramon embarked upon an experiment that even he described as… “interesting”.
A few years earlier, the French veterinarian had been trying out a new diphtheria vaccine on horses, when he made an accidental discovery: some animals reacted by developing nasty abscesses at the injection site, and these ones also tended to develop stronger immune responses. This got him thinking – what else could he add to the vaccine, to encourage this to happen?
Over the next year, Ramon tested a bizarre smorgasbord of ingredients, seemingly based on what he happened to have in his kitchen cupboards. Together with the diphtheria vaccine, his unfortunate patients were injected with tapioca, starch, agar, lecithin – an emulsion of oil, commonly found in chocolate – and even breadcrumbs.
The experiments were a success. Animals which had been given vaccines that included Ramon’s concoctions produced significantly more antibodies than those which didn’t, suggesting that they would be better protected against diphtheria.
And thus the field of “adjuvants” was born. Named after the Latin word “adjuvare”, meaning “to help” or “aid”, these are substances which can be added to vaccines to make them more effective. They’re widely used to this day – and they’re no less weird than they were to begin with. The most commonly used adjuvant on the planet is aluminium...
[...] Other popular adjuvants include squalene, an oily substance made from shark livers, and extracts from the bark of the quillaja tree, which has traditionally been used by the Andean Mapuche people to make soap as its bark can be powdered and mixed with water to form a lather. The newest additions – which haven’t yet been licensed – are perhaps the strangest of all, such as the disembodied tails of bacteria and “bacterial ghosts”, made from their empty skins.
[...] “Without an adjuvant, antibodies will generally disappear, maybe after a few weeks or months. But with adjuvants they might last for a few years.” says Bingbing Sun, a chemical engineer at Dalian University of Technology, in the Chinese city of Dalian. He gives the example of certain types of hepatitis B vaccine. “If they don't include adjuvants, antibody production will be very, super low. They don't really have the ability to induce antibody production,” he says.
For over a century, why these apparently random ingredients are so essential to vaccines has remained a total mystery. Now scientists are racing to unravel their secrets... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS (intro): Scientists add some bizarre things to vaccines, such as aluminium and extracts from shark livers. Many vaccines simply don’t work without them – but no one knows why. In 1925, Gaston Ramon embarked upon an experiment that even he described as… “interesting”.
A few years earlier, the French veterinarian had been trying out a new diphtheria vaccine on horses, when he made an accidental discovery: some animals reacted by developing nasty abscesses at the injection site, and these ones also tended to develop stronger immune responses. This got him thinking – what else could he add to the vaccine, to encourage this to happen?
Over the next year, Ramon tested a bizarre smorgasbord of ingredients, seemingly based on what he happened to have in his kitchen cupboards. Together with the diphtheria vaccine, his unfortunate patients were injected with tapioca, starch, agar, lecithin – an emulsion of oil, commonly found in chocolate – and even breadcrumbs.
The experiments were a success. Animals which had been given vaccines that included Ramon’s concoctions produced significantly more antibodies than those which didn’t, suggesting that they would be better protected against diphtheria.
And thus the field of “adjuvants” was born. Named after the Latin word “adjuvare”, meaning “to help” or “aid”, these are substances which can be added to vaccines to make them more effective. They’re widely used to this day – and they’re no less weird than they were to begin with. The most commonly used adjuvant on the planet is aluminium...
[...] Other popular adjuvants include squalene, an oily substance made from shark livers, and extracts from the bark of the quillaja tree, which has traditionally been used by the Andean Mapuche people to make soap as its bark can be powdered and mixed with water to form a lather. The newest additions – which haven’t yet been licensed – are perhaps the strangest of all, such as the disembodied tails of bacteria and “bacterial ghosts”, made from their empty skins.
[...] “Without an adjuvant, antibodies will generally disappear, maybe after a few weeks or months. But with adjuvants they might last for a few years.” says Bingbing Sun, a chemical engineer at Dalian University of Technology, in the Chinese city of Dalian. He gives the example of certain types of hepatitis B vaccine. “If they don't include adjuvants, antibody production will be very, super low. They don't really have the ability to induce antibody production,” he says.
For over a century, why these apparently random ingredients are so essential to vaccines has remained a total mystery. Now scientists are racing to unravel their secrets... (MORE - details)
