Special Feature: Cytokines as adjuvants for avian vaccines

The worldwide trend towards a reduced reliance on in-feed antibiotics has increased the pressure to develop alternative strategies to manage infectious diseases in poultry. With this in mind, there is a great emphasis on vaccine use and the enhancement of existing vaccines to provide long-term protection. Currently existing adjuvants for poultry can have deleterious side-effects, such as inflammation, resulting in the down-grading of meat quality and a subsequent reduction in profits. Therefore, to enhance the use of vaccination, alternative adjuvants must be developed. The use of recombinant cytokines as adjuvants in poultry is attracting considerable attention, and their potential role as such has been addressed by several studies. The recent identification of a number of chicken cytokine genes has provided the possibility to study their effectiveness in enhancing the immune response during infection and vaccination. This review focuses on the recent studies involving the assessment of cytokines as vaccine adjuvants.