Definition of "adjuvant"

adjuvant

/ˈæd͡ʒ.ə.vənt/

adjective
1. Helping; helpful; assisting.
2. (medicine) Designating a supplementary form of treatment, especially a cancer therapy administered after removal of a primary tumour.
  Quotations
  Adjuvant chemotherapy, Carbone conjectured, could be the surgeon's little helper.
  2010, Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of all Maladies, Fourth Estate, published 2011, page 219
noun
plural adjuvants
1. Someone who helps or facilitates; an assistant, a helper.
2. (medicine) Something that enhances the effectiveness of a medical treatment; a supplementary treatment.
3. (pharmacology) An additive (as in a drug) that aids or modifies the action of the principal ingredient.
4. (agriculture) An additive (often a separate product) that enhances the efficacy of pesticide products, but has little or no pesticidal activity itself.
5. (immunology) A substance enhancing the immune response to an antigen.
  Quotations
  The well-known tropic action of immune serum as an adjuvant to phagocytosis suggested early in our studies that we might here be dealing with a similar phenomenon.
  Gay, Frederick P.; Claypole, Edit J. (1914), “Specific Hyperleukocytosis: Studies In Typhoid Immunization”, in Archives of Internal Medicine‎, volume XIV, issue 5, retrieved 16 April 2020, pages 662–670