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CN-122005529-A - Application of N-acetylcysteine in preparation of immunity-enhancing medicine

CN122005529ACN 122005529 ACN122005529 ACN 122005529ACN-122005529-A

Abstract

The invention discloses an application of N-acetylcysteine in preparation of a medicament for enhancing an immune effect, and relates to the technical field of biology. The invention provides the application of N-acetylcysteine or pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof serving as an active ingredient in preparing medicines for enhancing vaccine immunity and/or assisting in treating infection on the basis of the existing vaccine immunity regulator technology, and the N-acetylcysteine maintains low-level intracellular active oxygen by directly protecting mitochondrial respiratory chain functions of plasma cells, thereby providing unique advantages on enhancing immune response and memory, not only improving long-term immunity protection effect, but also avoiding the safety problems possibly brought by the traditional immunity regulator, such as local or systemic adverse reactions, providing a new safe and effective source for the existing vaccine immunity regulator and medicines for treating infection, and having wide application prospect.

Inventors

  • XU CHUNLIANG
  • ZHU YIMING

Assignees

  • 中山大学

Dates

Publication Date
20260512
Application Date
20260309

Claims (10)

  1. The use of n-acetylcysteine or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof as active ingredient in the manufacture of a medicament for enhancing the immune effect of a vaccine and/or for the adjuvant treatment of infections.
  2. 2. The use according to claim 1, wherein the medicament enhances long-term immunoprotection of the antibody by protecting mitochondrial function of plasma cells, promoting plasma cell production and/or prolonging survival time of plasma cells.
  3. 3. The use of claim 1, wherein the medicament is administered in a subject.
  4. 4. The use of claim 3, wherein the subject comprises a human or an animal.
  5. 5. The use according to claim 3, wherein the route of administration comprises oral or injection.
  6. 6. The use according to claim 3, wherein the medicament is administered to the subject simultaneously with and/or after vaccination of the subject and/or exposure of the subject to a pathogen.
  7. 7. A pharmaceutical composition for enhancing the immune effect of a vaccine and/or for adjunctive treatment of an infection comprising N-acetylcysteine or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof.
  8. 8. The pharmaceutical composition of claim 7, wherein, the pharmaceutical composition also comprises pharmaceutically acceptable auxiliary materials.
  9. 9. The pharmaceutical composition of claim 7, wherein the dosage form of the pharmaceutical composition comprises an oral formulation, an injection.
  10. 10. A method of enhancing the immunoprotection effect of an antibody comprising administering N-acetylcysteine or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof simultaneously with and/or after vaccination of a subject and/or exposure of a subject to a pathogen.

Description

Application of N-acetylcysteine in preparation of immunity-enhancing medicine Technical Field The invention belongs to the technical field of biology, and particularly relates to application of N-acetylcysteine in preparation of a medicament for enhancing an immune effect. Background Along with the rapid development of biotechnology and genetic engineering technology, various novel vaccines are developed for different infectious diseases, but the vaccines have the defects of small molecules, limited immunogenicity, difficulty in continuously inducing organisms to generate effective immune response, short protection time and the like, so that an adjuvant matched with the vaccines is required to better enhance the immune effect. The current vaccine immunomodulator mainly comprises an adjuvant and an immunopotentiator, and can enhance the immune response of the vaccine and improve the efficacy of the vaccine by activating the immune system of a host. Common adjuvants include aluminum gums, mineral oils, inactivated bacteria, chemically synthesized substances, and the like. Different vaccine immunomodulators have different action mechanisms, including antigen storage effects (i.e. after local injection of antigen into the body, the adjuvant recruits and stores excessive antigen and slowly and continuously releases the antigen, so that the continuous stimulation time of the antigen is prolonged, the antibody titer is improved), the surface area of the antigen (i.e. the antigen is small in volume and low in relative molecular mass and is insufficient for inducing immune response, and the molecular weight and the surface area of the antigen are increased by wrapping the antigen), the carrier effect, the activation and maturation of dendritic cells are promoted, and the like. However, vaccine immunomodulators also have a number of problems, such as safety issues, local side effects, etc. Absolute safe vaccine immunomodulators are absent, can only be adjusted according to the action mechanism of the vaccine immunomodulators, and can maximize the immune stimulation effect and minimize the toxic and side effects. Partial immunomodulators induce strong antibody responses and cellular immunity, and thus are prone to local or systemic adverse reactions, such as inflammation, allergic reactions, etc. In addition, some immunomodulators have problems that the preparation is not applicable, such as the oil immunomodulators are more viscous and are not favorable for injection, and the liposome immunomodulators have poor stability. Therefore, there is a need to develop a vaccine immunopotentiator which can improve the immunogenicity of a vaccine, prolong the protection time and optimize the immune response quality while ensuring the safety. Disclosure of Invention The invention aims to overcome the defects of the prior art and provides application of N-acetylcysteine in preparation of a medicament for enhancing an immune effect. In order to achieve the aim, the technical scheme adopted by the invention is that N-acetylcysteine or pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof is used as an active ingredient in the preparation of medicines for enhancing the vaccine immunity effect and/or for assisting in treating infection. It was found that N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a potent antioxidant, promotes glutathione synthesis, thereby reducing intracellular Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and free radicals. High levels of ROS can cause oxidative stress damage to cells, especially in plasma cells, and excessive ROS levels can lead to impaired mitochondrial function, thereby affecting their survival and function. NAC enhances plasma cell residence in bone marrow and long-term survival by maintaining low levels of ROS, protecting mitochondrial respiratory chain function of plasma cells. Through extensive research, the inventor of the present application can use N-acetylcysteine to enhance vaccine immune effect, especially in enhancing humoral immune response and memory application. Experiments prove that the N-acetylcysteine reduces active oxygen and free radicals in plasma cells by promoting the synthesis of glutathione and protects the plasma cells from oxidative damage, thereby obviously promoting the production of the plasma cells and prolonging the survival time of the plasma cells and further enhancing the long-term immune response of antibodies. Furthermore, based on the unique mechanism of protecting the mitochondrial function of plasma cells and prolonging the service life of plasma cells by using N-acetylcysteine, the inventor discovers that when pathogen infection occurs, the organism needs a large amount of antibodies to be rapidly produced by the plasma cells to clear the pathogen, and at the moment, the N-acetylcysteine can also protect the effector plasma cells, so that the instant humoral immune response of the organism is enhanced, thereby assisting in the treatment of infection, accelerating the pathogen clearance and relieving c