Abstract
Opioid use disorders (OUD) and fatal overdoses are a national emergency in the United States. Therapeutic vaccines offer a promising strategy to treat OUD and reduce the incidence of overdose. Immunization with opioid-based haptens conjugated to immunogenic carriers elicits opioid-specific antibodies that block opioid distribution to the brain and reduce opioid-induced behavior and toxicity in pre-clinical models. This study tested whether the efficacy of a lead oxycodone conjugate vaccine was improved by formulation in either aluminum hydroxide or the squalene-based oil-in-water emulsion MF59 adjuvant, which was recently FDA-approved for influenza vaccines in subjects 65+ years old. In adult BALB/c mice, alum formulation was more effective than MF59 at promoting the early expansion of hapten-specific B cells and the production of oxycodone-specific serum IgG antibodies, as well as blocking oxycodone distribution to the brain and oxycodone-induced motor activity. Alum was also more effective than MF59 at promoting early differentiation of peptide-specific MHCII-restricted CD4+ Tfh and GC-Tfh cells in adult C57Bl/6 mice immunized with a model peptide-protein conjugate. In contrast, alum and MF59 were equally effective in promoting hapten-specific B cells and peptide-specific MHCII-restricted CD4+ T cell differentiation in older C57Bl/6 mice. These data suggest that alum is a more effective adjuvant than MF59 for conjugate vaccines targeting synthetic small molecule haptens or peptide antigens in adult, but not aged, mice.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 909-917 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 3 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Keywords
- B cell
- T cell
- adjuvant
- germinal center
- opioid use disorder
- oxycodone
- vaccine