What are Immune Enhancers?

Scott: Can you talk about what immune enhancers are?

Prof. Garth Nicolson: Immune enhancers are, generally, natural products that stimulate the immune system. Our immune system, we have this memory that goes back a long way. The memory is primarily for infections. And if we give substances that are similar to the infection, it can fool the immune system into responding and thinking there's an infection and essentially charging up and getting ready for infection. 

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Prof. Garth Nicolson: So, that's how you enhance the immune system. You take something that might look like, for example, a polymer from a bacteria, but it's not, but it's very similar, and put that into a human and then the immune system thinks that there may be an infection that's coming, and it just expands and gets ready to fight that infection. That's how an immune enhancer would work.

Scott: What are some of those things? You said they're natural products, like . . .

Prof. Garth Nicolson: Most are natural products, for example, they can be natural sugar polymers, for example, that mimic what might be on the surface of a bacteria. That's just one example. There are many other examples of cell membrane components and so on from bacteria or capsid components from viruses, or things that mimic that, and it could stimulate an immune response.