Abstract
The plaque technique of Cunningham and Szenberg was used to study the adjuvant effect of purified onjisaponin B on IgM and IgG formation.
1) The administration of onjisaponin B caused a significant increase of the number of plaque forming cells of the spleen after immunization with sheep red blood cells (SRBC) .
2) The highest adjuvant effect was obtained by a dose of 0.01μg/mouse.
3) Time intervals between onjisaponin B and antigen injections revealed that onjisaponin B showed the most obvious adjuvant effect when injected with onjisaponin B and antigen simultaneously.
4) Onjisaponin B showed a remarkable adjuvant effect when injected by the intraperitoneal or intramuscular route, but less by the intravenous or subcutaneous route.
5) The administration of onjisaponin B increased not only IgM antibody forming cells, but also IgG antibody forming cells. The number of these cells reached the peak 4 and 6 days after the injection of antigen, respectively.
Passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) was used to study adjuvant effect of onjisaponin B on IgE antibody formation in mouse after immunization with ovalbumim.
6) IgE antibody formation was not observed at all when albumim was injected alone.
7) Adjuvant effect of onjisaponin B was not observed when injected with 1 and 10 μg of onjisaponin B and 100 μg of antigen. A little amount of transient antibody was observed in the case of injecting 1000μg of antigen.
8) Striking adjuvant effect was observed in the case of Al (OH) 3 gel. When onjisaponin B was added to Al (OH) 3 gel as adjuvant, no remarkable change in the production of IgE was recognized as compared with Al (OH) 3 gel alone.
