Pharmaceutical Applications
Quillaja saponins are utilized as veterinary vaccine adjuvants, as human pre-clinical and clinical adjuvants, and as hemolytic agents for blood diagnostic kits.
Pharma
For the past 35 years, San Diego, CA based Desert King International (DKI) has been the world’s largest producer of food grade saponin extracts. For over a decade, DKI has produced and supplied the majority of pure saponin extracts, rich in QS-21, used by the pharmaceutical industry. As DKI’s knowledge of industry requirements and issues increased, the company dedicated an increasing amount of resources to ensure it met the high standards required by its pharmaceutical customers.
Desert King employs over 200 people in Mexico, Chile and the US. With its Quillaja saponaria forestry operations and production facility in Chile, the company has established a robust, integrated supply chain that ensures the production of the highest purity extracts.
The control systems and in depth knowledge DKI provides, results in the most consistent Quillaja based saponin extracts available globally. Our years of experience and customer focused orientation, combine to make us the supplier of choice for purified QS-21.
Vaccine Adjuvants
Adjuvants are substances that are added to vaccines to help potentiate an immunological response. Additionally adjuvants allow for smaller amounts of the inactivated virus or bacterial components to be utilized in the production of the vaccine.
Purified saponins from Quillaja saponaria have been utilized as vaccine adjuvants for decades. Common usages for Quillaja based adjuvants include pre-clinical and veterinary vaccine applications and human clinical trials (QS-21).
Purified Quillaja saponins also possess the ability to form immune stimulating complexes (ISCOM’s) that function as vaccine adjuvants. These spherical cage-like structures are spontaneously formed when purified Quillaja saponins are mixed with cholesterol and phospholipids.
Desert King´s Quillaja Adjuvant Advantages
The majority of adjuvants on the market today, including alum, mainly activate the humoral immune response. Quillaja saponins on the other hand, are well known to induce strong activation of both the cell-mediated (Th1) and the humoral arms (Th2) of the immune system. Moreover, Quillaja based adjuvants stimulate cytotoxic T-Cell production against exogenous antigens thus providing an enhanced immune response.
Quillaja based adjuvants are currently found in dozens of commercially available Veterinary vaccines from the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world, and are currently being studied in over 15 human vaccine candidates ranging from oncology to infectious diseases.
Vaccine Adjuvant
Veterinary Adjuvant
Hemolytic agent for diagnostic analyses
Quillaja Saponins in Diagnostic formulations:
• Used for diagnostics buffers for hemolytic analyses.
• High content of QS18; stronger hemolytic process.
• Stable highly purified products.
• Effective in low concentrations.
• 100% water-soluble.
Other Products
Quillaja Saponin Fractions Available for Pre-Clinical Research or ISCOM Preparation:
- QS-7 Fraction
- QS-17 Fraction
- QS-18 Fraction
- Fraction A
- Fraction B
- Fraction C
- Quillaic Acid
