Why does adaptive immune response to an mRNA vaccine require an adjuvant to trigger innate immunity?

💡 Explanation

An adjuvant is necessary to activate innate immune receptors on antigen-presenting cells, because the unmodified mRNA alone may be insufficient to stimulate a strong response from tolerogenic dendritic cells. Therefore, without an adjuvant, tolerance may develop rather than a robust adaptive immune response, and the vaccine would be ineffective.

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