Megdiche Yasmine, Salerno-Gonçalves Rosângela
Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States.
Front Immunol. 2025 Feb 18;16:1547213. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1547213. eCollection 2025.
Adjuvants are crucial in vaccines and cancer therapies, enhancing therapeutic efficacy through diverse mechanisms. In vaccines, adjuvants are traditionally valued for amplifying immune responses, ensuring robust and long-lasting protection against pathogens. In cancer treatments, adjuvants can boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy or immunotherapy by targeting tumor antigens, rendering cancer cells more vulnerable to treatment. Recent research has uncovered new molecular-level effects of the adjuvants, mainly through epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetics encompasses heritable modifications in gene expression that do not alter the DNA sequence, impacting processes such as DNA methylation, histone modification, and non-coding RNA expression. These epigenetic changes play a pivotal role in regulating gene activity, influencing immune pathways, and modulating the strength and duration of immune responses. Whether in vaccines or cancer treatments, understanding how adjuvants interact with epigenetic regulators offers significant potential for developing more precise, cell-targeted therapies across various medical fields. This review delves into the evolving role of adjuvants and their interactions with epigenetic mechanisms. It also examines the potential of harnessing epigenetic changes to enhance adjuvant efficacy and explores the novel use of epigenetic inhibitors as adjuvants in therapeutic settings.
佐剂在疫苗和癌症治疗中至关重要，可通过多种机制提高治疗效果。在疫苗中，佐剂传统上因其能增强免疫反应而受到重视，确保对病原体产生强大而持久的保护作用。在癌症治疗中，佐剂可通过靶向肿瘤抗原提高化疗或免疫疗法的有效性，使癌细胞更易受到治疗。最近的研究发现了佐剂在分子水平上的新作用，主要是通过表观遗传机制。表观遗传学包括基因表达中的可遗传修饰，这些修饰不会改变DNA序列，影响DNA甲基化、组蛋白修饰和非编码RNA表达等过程。这些表观遗传变化在调节基因活性、影响免疫途径以及调节免疫反应的强度和持续时间方面起着关键作用。无论是在疫苗还是癌症治疗中，了解佐剂如何与表观遗传调节因子相互作用，为在各个医学领域开发更精确的细胞靶向疗法提供了巨大潜力。本综述深入探讨了佐剂不断演变的作用及其与表观遗传机制的相互作用。它还研究了利用表观遗传变化提高佐剂疗效的潜力，并探讨了在治疗环境中使用表观遗传抑制剂作为佐剂的新用途。
