| Summary: | <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is an urgent need to develop safe and effective adjuvants for the new generation of subunit vaccines. We developed the tubular immunostimulating complex (TI-complex) as a new nanoparticulate antigen delivery system. The morphology and composition of TI-complexes principally differ from the known vesicular immunostimulating complexes (ISCOMs). However, methodology for the preparation of TI-complexes has suffered a number of shortcomings. The aim of the present work was to obtain an antigen carrier consisting of triterpene glycosides from <it>Cucumaria japonica</it>, cholesterol, and monogalactosyldiacylglycerol from marine macrophytes with reproducible properties and high adjuvant activity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The cucumarioside A<sub>2</sub>-2 - cholesterol - MGalDG ratio of 6:2:4 (by weight) was found to provide the most effective formation of TI-complexes and the minimum hemolytic activity <it>in vitro</it>. Tubules of TI-complexes have an outer diameter of about 16 nm, an inner diameter of 6 nm, and a length of 500 nm. A significant dilution by the buffer gradually destroyed the tubular nanoparticles. The TI-complex was able to increase the immunogenicity of the protein antigens from <it>Yersinia pseudotuberculosis </it>by three to four times.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We propose an optimized methodology for the preparation of homogeneous TI-complexes containing only tubular particles, which would achieve reproducible immunization results. We suggest that the elaborated TI-complexes apply as a universal delivery system for different subunit antigens within anti-infectious vaccines and enhance their economic efficacy and safety.</p>
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