Carrier Proteins

Of the many different immunotherapeutic vaccine technologies, vaccine formulation using the antigen coupled to carrier proteins has made tremendous progress in the clinic. The carrier proteins that have been used include Tetanus toxoid (TT), Diphtheria toxoid (DT) and KLH. The TT and DT carrier proteins were initially used due to their ready availability in the desired quality for clinical use.

Over the last several years, KLH has been routinely used as carrier protein in laboratory animal studies to enhance immune responses to administered antigens. Because of its inherent advantages and availability of KLH of clinical grade, it is used extensively in the preparation and evaluation of KLH-antigen conjugate vaccines for a number of disease indications including cancer, AIDS, id-vaccine in lymphoma, infectious disease, vaccines against drug abuse, etc.