Overview of vaccine adjuvants

Adjuvants are essential components of vaccines that have been particularly effective at promoting protective humoral immunity to infectious diseases and preventing mortality and morbidity. There are many different types of adjuvants with different modes of action. A better understanding of their potential adjuvanticity could provide guidance for the development of novel adjuvants for cancer immunotherapy. In this article, we review the importance of adjuvants in vaccine development, their mechanisms of action and adjuvant-induced autoimmunity and discuss some strategies for driving the development of new vaccine adjuvants.