Vaccination is the most effective public health intervention to prevent influenza infections, which are responsible for an important burden of respiratory illnesses and deaths each year. Currently, licensed influenza vaccines are mostly split inactivated, although in order to achieve higher efficacy rates, some influenza vaccines contain adjuvants. Although split-inactivated vaccines induce mostly humoral responses, tailoring mucosal and cellular immune responses is crucial for preventing influenza infections. Quillaja brasiliensis saponin-based adjuvants, including ISCOM-like nanoparticles formulated with the QB-90 saponin fraction (IQB90), have been studied in preclinical models for more than a decade and have been demonstrated to induce strong humoral and cellular immune responses towards several viral antigens. Herein, we demonstrate that a split-inactivated IQB90 adjuvanted influenza vaccine triggered a protective immune response, stronger than that induced by a commercial unadjuvanted vaccine, when applied either by the subcutaneous or the intranasal route. Moreover, we reveal that this novel adjuvant confers up to a ten-fold dose-sparing effect, which could be crucial for pandemic preparedness. Last but not least, we assessed the role of caspase-1/11 in the generation of the immune response triggered by the IQB90 adjuvanted influenza vaccine in a mouse model and found that the cellular-mediated immune response triggered by the IQB90-Flu relies, at least in part, on a mechanism involving the casp-1/11 pathway but not the humoral response elicited by this formulation.
Keywords: ISCOMs; Quillaja brasiliensis; adjuvants; dose-sparing effect; influenza virus.