Definition of "adjuvant" []

• A pharmacological agent added to a drug to increase or aid its effect. (noun)
• An immunological agent that increases the antigenic response. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "To describe this form of treatment, Carbone and his team used the word adjuvant, from the Latin phrase “to help.”"
• "The term adjuvant, from a Latin word meaning "to help," was coined in the 1920s by Gaston Ramon, a veterinarian at the Pasteur Institute in France, who observed that horses given diphtheria toxin had a stronger immune response if they had some inflammation at the injection site."
• "An adjuvant is a vaccine component that boosts the immune response to the vaccine."