Vaccine Types from Creative Biolabs

A conjugate vaccine is created by covalently attaching a poor antigen to a strong antigen thereby eliciting a stronger immunological response to the poor antigen. Most commonly, the poor antigen is a polysaccharide that is attached to strong protein antigen. However peptide/protein and protein/protein conjugates have also been developed. B cell response to a capsular polysaccharide is T cell independent, meaning that B cells can produce antibodies without T cell stimulation. By conjugating the polysaccharide to a protein carrier, a T cell response can be induced. Normally, polysaccharides by themselves cannot be loaded onto the MHC complex of antigen presenting cells (APC) because MHC can only bind peptides.