Saponins

A bit of Chemistry

There are about 40-50 saponins in Prairie Carnation seeds, and they are all different. Yet, they all contain a sugar part (Glucon) and a non sugar part (Aglucon), and for this reason they are polar molecules. Polar means that the glucon is water soluble and the aglucon is water insoluble, but oil soluble. For the polar nature, saponins will swim in a layer on water or on oil. When shaken, they form bubbles (micells) in the fluid like the bubles in vinegar and oil in a salad dressing. This effect is called adjuvant or detergent and can be used to make an emulsion or to make a cleaning agent. 

Saponins as Vaccine Adjuvants

Saponins are large molecules which are not synthetically produced at reasonable cost. They occur in plants and some lower animals and are extracted as natural compounds. Saponins are part of our daily food and can be eaten safely, because they are natural e.g. in ginseng or garlic and many other plants.

Many products which have to be used where water and oils compounds are used together, have to contain adjuvants. Typical use is in salad dressings. This is also the case in human blood where hydrophilic (watery) compounds exist like plasma, but also hydrophobic ones (oily)  like cholesterol. For this reason, vaccines need to contain adjuvants. Vaccine adjuvants are usually 95% of vaccines, and less than 5% is the active ingredient, the antigen. So vaccine adjuvants are very important for vaccines to work. In addition to the adjuvant effect, they also have to be immunstimulatory, they have to put our immune system in an alert status, because after a vaccination, our immune system has to react by making antibodies against the antigen and the adjuvant helps doing it. 

Natural Cleantech Surfactants

A natural surfactants is chemically similar to adjuvants but used in other industries. Surfactants are used for cleaning. Coming from plants , they are sustainable and biodegradable , which  makes them ideally suited for bioremediation purposes in the environment, since it is a biologically degradable product that can be degraded by nature. The saponin surfactant is a powerfull product that is effective at very low concentrations. It can be used for cleaning orphaned oil wells together with soil microrogansisms, and at other sites where energy operations have left oil and other chemical residues in the soil.  For household cleaning products, chemical surfactants may be cheaper. 

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