Abstract
In the past 30 years, few researches focus on the efficacy of adjuvant against Trichinella spiralis infection. Identifying new, improved vaccine adjuvants for T. spiralis infection are required. β-glucan are effective and safe as adjuvant for infectious diseases. In this paper, we first observed the adjuvanticity of β-glucan as adjuvant for defensing helminth T. spiralis in vivo. We showed that IgG and IgE were elevated in the mice immunized with β-glucan combined with recombinant T. spiralis serine protease inhibitor (rTs-Serpin), which is one of the vaccine candidates. Furthermore, in vitro, the combination of β-glucan and rTs-Serpin enhanced the maturation of bone marrow dendritic cells (BMDCs) compared to rTs-Serpin alone. We showed that β-glucan + rTs-Serpin -treated BMDCs secreted higher production of IL-12 and IL-10. Moreover, β-glucan + rTs-Serpin -treated BMDCs not only promoted the population of CD4+ IFN-γ+ T cells, but also enhanced the population of CD4+ IL-4+ T cells. These findings suggested that β-glucan, as an adjuvant, have the capacity to protect against T. spiralis infection via activating both Th1 and Th2 immune response.