Recent studies have shown that IL-12 initiates the development of cell-mediated immunity following infection with certain infectious agents. This attribute of IL-12 makes it a potentially effective adjuvant for vaccines. This review summarizes our findings in the Leishmania system, outlining the role of endogenous IL-12 in resistance to L. major and the use of exogenous IL-12 in a vaccine against L. major, and also describes other examples in which IL-12 has been shown to be effective as an adjuvant at inducing protective immunity. The potential use of IL-12 as an adjuvant in therapeutic vaccines is also discussed.
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Scott et al. (1997) studied this question.