Adjuvant Curdlan Contributes to Immunization against Infection in a Mouse Strain-Specific Manner.

The low efficacy and side effects associated with antifungal agents have highlighted the importance of developing immunotherapeutic approaches to treat infection. We developed an immunization strategy that uses selective Dectin-1 agonist as an adjuvant. BALB/c or C57BL/6 mice received curdlan or β-glucan peptide (BGP) before immunization with heat-killed , and the mice were infected with viable on day 14 post immunization and euthanized 14 days after infection. Adjuvant curdlan restored pulmonary tumor necrosis factor- α (TNF-α) levels, as induced by immunization with heat-killed The average area and relative frequency of titan cells in the lungs of curdlan-treated BALB/c mice were reduced. However, this did not reduce the pulmonary fungal burden or decrease the i0,nflammatory infiltrate in the pulmonary parenchyma of BALB/c mice. Conversely, adjuvant curdlan induced high levels of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and interleukin (IL)-10 and decreased the burden in the lungs of C57BL/6 mice, which was not replicated in β-glucan peptide-treated mice. The adjuvant curdlan favors the control of infection depending on the immune response profile of the mouse strain. This study will have implications for developing new immunotherapeutic approaches to treat infection.