The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will spend up to US$70 million on seven new vaccine adjuvant projects.

The lowdown: Only three vaccine adjuvants have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in human vaccines: alum, a mixture of aluminium salts that has been used in vaccines since the 1920s; GlaxoSmithKline's AS04, a combination of alum and an immune-stimulating lipid that is used in vaccines against human papilloma virus and hepatitis B virus; and GlaxoSmithKline's AS03, an oil-in-water adjuvant that was used in an H5N1 vaccine. New adjuvants, the NIAID hopes, could help to improve current vaccines, extend the vaccine supply or enhance vaccine efficacy in immune-compromised individuals. To this end, the NIAID is funding seven new adjuvant-discovery contracts, aiming in particular to find adjuvants that can activate the adaptive immune system.

This funding will enable academic and industry researchers to: use experimental and computer-based approaches to screen more than a million molecules to identify candidates that trigger adaptive immune responses; determine how the most promising adjuvant candidates work; make structural changes to candidate molecules to improve their safety and efficacy profiles; and test vaccines that have been formulated with optimized adjuvant candidates for safety and efficacy in animals.