Abstract
Safe and effective immunologic adjuvants are often essential for vaccines. However, the choice of adjuvant for licensed vaccines is limited, especially for those that are administered intradermally. We show that non-tissue damaging, near-infrared (NIR) laser light given in short exposures to small areas of skin, without the use of additional chemical or biological agents, significantly increases immune responses to intradermal influenza vaccination without augmenting IgE. The NIR laser-adjuvanted vaccine confers increased protection in a murine influenza lethal challenge model as compared to unadjuvanted vaccine. We show that NIR laser treatment induces the expression of specific chemokines in the skin resulting in recruitment and activation of dendritic cells and is safe to use in both mice and humans. The NIR laser adjuvant technology provides a novel, safe, low-cost, simple-to-use, potentially broadly applicable and clinically feasible approach to enhancing vaccine efficacy as an alternative to chemical and biological adjuvants.
Highlights
Safe and potent immunologic adjuvants are a key element of current vaccine design [1,2]
We identified 1.0 W/cm2 as the maximum safe irradiance for the pulse wave (PW) 532 nm laser (Figure 1A) and 5.0 W/cm2 for both the 1064 nm PW (Figure 1B) and continuous wave (CW) lasers (Figure 1C)
No visual damage such blistering, bruising, crusting, edema, redness or swelling damage was seen when the laser power was below the safe irradiance for each parameter for the PW 532 nm laser (Figure S1A) and 5.0 W/cm2 for both the 1064 nm PW (Figure S1A) and CW lasers (Figure 1D)
Summary
Safe and potent immunologic adjuvants are a key element of current vaccine design [1,2]. There is a paucity of effective adjuvants for influenza vaccine; the recent pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine went through to production and implementation without an adjuvant [1,5,16,17]. In light of these considerations, the development of new, safe and effective adjuvants is important for current and future vaccination programs
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