Abstract
The development of combination vaccines is essential to reduce the number of injections, shorten vaccination schedules and increase vaccination coverage. Vaccine adjuvants are used to modulate and enhance the immune response induced by the antigens. To support the development of combination vaccines, the study of antigen-adjuvant interactions in the final vaccine formulations is required as interaction competitions may take place between the different antigens. In the present work, a capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) methodology was firstly optimized on six model proteins, namely bovine serum albumin, β-lactoglobulin, myoglobin, ribonuclease A, cytochrome C and lysozyme. A cationic dynamic coating (polybrene) and a zwitterionic amino acid additive (β-alanine) in the background electrolyte were used to reduce the phenomena of protein adsorption on the inner wall of the capillary and thus optimize the separation efficiency of the proteins. The developed methodology was then used to separate three strains from inactivated polio virus, each strain being a whole virus composed of copies of 4 viral proteins and study their interaction with aluminum oxyhydroxide. The antigen-adjuvant interactions could be modulated by addition of phosphate ions playing the role of competitors for the poliovirus.