Evaluation of adjuvant activity of Astragaloside VII and its combination with different immunostimulating agents in Newcastle Disease vaccine.

Astragaloside VII (AST-VII), a major cycloartane saponin isolated from Turkish Astragalus species, turned out to be one of the most active metabolites demonstrating Th1/Th2 balanced immune response. As Quillaja saponins are extensively used in adjuvant systems, this study made an attempt to improve AST-VII based adjuvant systems by using different immunostimulatory/delivery agents (monophosphoryllipid A (MPL), Astragalus polysaccharide (APS) and squalene) and to induce cellular and humoral immune response against a viral vaccine. For this purpose, Newcastle Disease vaccine (NDV) was chosen as a model vaccine.