Study Tests an Adjuvant to Vaccinate Newborns

A new approach developed at Children’s Hospital Boston that uses an adjuvant (an agent to stimulate the immune system) along with a vaccine shows that newborns may be able to be vaccinated and protected from disease. The multinational study, funded by the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, stimulated blood samples from 120 Gambian infants with a panel of different toll-like receptors (TLRs) and measured production of cytokines from white blood cells — all elements of the immune response that are difficult to elicit in newborns. The infants ranged from newborn to 12 months old, allowing the researchers to examine agespecific effects to see if the adjuvants remained effective over time.

Results showed that many of the TLR agonists elicited some form of immune response, but a thiazoloquinoline compound, stimulating TLR7 and TLR8, elicited the greatest productions of the cytokine TNF-alpha, a key component of the immune response during the first month of life, and it was the only compound to elicit production of the cytokine interferon gamma in newborns. “Currently, until an infant gets the full vaccination series, he or she is not fully protected,” said Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, of Children’s Division of Infectious Diseases. “The adjuvant could be combined with any vaccine, and if things work very well, it could provide single-shot protection at birth.”