1. ¹CSL Limited, Bio21 Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
2. ²Department of Internal Medicine, University of Munich, Munich, Germany
3. ³Department of Molecular Oncology, Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA
4. ⁴Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Melbourne Centre for Clinical Sciences, Austin Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia
5. ⁵Research and Development Department, CSL Limited, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Correspondence: Dr E Maraskovsky, Research, CSL Limited, Bio21 Institute, 30 Flemington Road, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia. E-mail: eugene.maraskovsky@csl.com.au

Received 22 February 2009; Accepted 10 March 2009; Published online 21 April 2009.

Abstract

Adjuvants are components that when added to subunit antigen (Ag) vaccines boost their immunogenicity and thus immune efficacy. However, there are few adjuvants that are approved for clinical use resulting in a critical need for the development of safe and effective adjuvants for use in both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. The paucity of appropriate adjuvants is more chronic for the development of therapeutic vaccines for cancer and chronic infectious disease, which need to induce cytotoxic T-cell responses via cross-presentation of the vaccine Ag by dendritic cells. The ISCOMATRIX adjuvant represents a unique adjuvant system that facilitates Ag delivery and presentation as well as immunomodulation to provide enhanced and accelerated immune responses. The immune responses generated are of broad specificity to the vaccine Ag, and include robust antibody responses of multiple subclasses as well as both CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-cell responses. Here we discuss our understanding of the mechanisms of action by which ISCOMATRIX adjuvant may facilitate these integrated immune responses and touch on insights gained through its clinical experience.