Vaccines and adjuvants are conventionally studied for the magnitude and specificity of the antigen-directed immune response they generate. Less attention has been paid to a parallel effect: the way adjuvant components and vaccine formulations reshape the local and systemic inflammatory microenvironment, triggering innate signaling cascades, such as TLR, NLRP3, and cGAS-STING pathways, that extend well beyond the intended antigen-specific response. These microenvironmental and signaling changes can influence outcomes far from the vaccination site, with relevance to cancer immunotherapy, infectious disease control, autoimmune risk, and neuroinflammatory processes. Understanding these broader effects is increasingly important as adjuvant platforms diversify and are repurposed across therapeutic contexts.
This Research Topic aims to move beyond the standard assessment of vaccine-induced immune responses to examine how vaccines and adjuvants actively modulate the inflammatory microenvironment and immune signaling pathways. We seek to bring together mechanistic, translational, and clinical studies that characterize adjuvant-driven remodeling of innate immune signaling and its downstream consequences across disease contexts. By consolidating evidence from cancer, infectious disease, autoimmune, and neuroinflammatory research, this collection intends to build a cross-disciplinary understanding of adjuvants and vaccine components as active modulators of inflammation, not simply as tools for generating antigen-specific immunity, and to identify shared signaling mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities across these fields.
We welcome contributions addressing: adjuvant-driven remodeling of local and systemic inflammatory microenvironments; innate immune signaling pathways (TLR, NLRP3, cGAS-STING, and others) activated by vaccine components; the interplay between vaccine/adjuvant-induced inflammation and disease-specific immune dysregulation in cancer, infectious disease, autoimmunity, and neuroinflammatory disorders; and novel adjuvant platforms designed to fine-tune inflammatory outcomes, including vaccine/adjuvant-specific delivery systems. We invite Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Perspective, and Systematic Review articles.
Article types and fees
This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
Case Report
Classification
Clinical Trial
Editorial
FAIR² Data
General Commentary
Hypothesis and Theory
Methods
Mini Review
Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.
Article types
This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
