Comparison of Montanide adjuvants, IMS 3012 (Nanoparticle), ISA 206 and ISA 35 (Emulsion based) along with incomplete Freund's adjuvant for hyperimmunization of equines used for production of polyvalent snake antivenom

The use of adjuvant is of fundamental importance in vaccines formulations and antisera production. Currently selection and use of adjuvant systems in snake antivenom preparation has become a major issue in terms of animal welfare as well as economics. In order to minimize disadvantages associated with traditionally used Freund's adjuvant (FA) in equines and to produce potent polyvalent antivenom against four Indian snake venoms in minimum possible period, a comparison was made between various commercially available non-emulsion/emulsion based adjuvants like IMS 3012, ISA 206 and ISA 35 with Incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA) for their immunopotentiation capacity and safety in donor animals. The present study was conducted in 33 new horses, randomly divided into four groups and hyperimmunized using crude mixture of snake venoms, viz.; Cobra venom (CV), Russell's viper venom (RV), Krait venom (KV) and Saw-scaled viper (EV) along with four above mentioned adjuvants through subcutaneous (s.c.) route at intervals of two weeks. Periodic standard safety assessments were done. Immunopotentiation ability of each adjuvant group in terms of percent responders were estimated at 14th, 21st, 30th and 43rd week. The neutralization activity (ED(50)) of pooled sera samples by 43(rd) week, obtained with IMS 3012 group for CV, RV, KV and EV venoms were 0.133, 0.143, 0.070 and 0.270 mg venom/ml of serum respectively. The antivenom potency with IMS 3012 and overall responding horses (100%) even against weak immunogen like CV was significantly higher (p