Adjuvants are substances or molecules that enhance the immunological response to a specific antigen and are components of vaccines. Vaccine adjuvants activate complex signaling networks in a variety of immune cell populations, necessary to develop antigen-specific adaptive immunity. Only two adjuvants—alum and AS04—are used in commercially available vaccines in the United States, according to NIAID website. More recently, the Food and Drug Administration approved AS03 adjuvant, in the pandemic H5N1 influenza vaccine. This is an enormous contrast considering that there are more than 2 dozen available vaccines against various types of bacteria and virus to prevent a variety of infectious diseases. Therefore, there is an enormous interest in developing new materials with versatile physiochemical properties that can elicit a certain type of immune response. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are needle-like nanomaterials that can be easily obtained via acidic hydrolysis of native cellulose. Research on CNCs continues to attract a high level of attention in both academic and industrial sectors due to their unique physicochemical properties, relative abundance, sustainability and low cost. Given their rigid needle-like morphologies and the availability of ample hydroxyl groups for surface chemical modifications, we report the design, synthesis, characterization, cytototoxicity and immunological studies of a small library of cationic functionalized CNCs. In this work, we investigated the immune response of novel cationic CNCs for potential use as vaccine adjuvants. The modified CNCs were synthesized via surface-initiated single-electron transfer living radical polymerization and characterized for their physical and morphological properties. We found that despite non-significant cytotoxicity, different cationic CNCs elicited distinct immune responses as evaluated by IL-1β secretion in LPS-stimulated and non-stimulated mouse macrophage-like cells (J774A). Overall, our results indicated that different modifications on the surface of CNCs could indeed affect their biological properties such as immunogenicity. These findings are crucial for the further development of these cellulose-based nanomaterials as vaccine adjuvants.<br/><br/><br/><br/>

Evaluation of immune response of a library of cationic surface modified cellulose nanocrystals for biomedical application as potential vaccine adjuvants

2019 Spring National Meeting

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