A Guide to Nucleic Acid Vaccines in the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases and Cancers: From Basic Principles to Current Applications.

Furong Qin,Hongli Chen,Bomiao Cui,Min Luo,Fan Xia,Jiao Chen,Yun Feng,Ping Zhang

doi:10.3389/fcell.2021.633776

Abstract

Faced with the challenges posed by infectious diseases and cancer, nucleic acid vaccines present excellent prospects in clinical applications. Compared with traditional vaccines, nucleic acid vaccines have the characteristics of high efficiency and low cost. Therefore, nucleic acid vaccines have potential advantages in disease prevention and treatment. However, the low immunogenicity and instability of nucleic acid vaccines have limited their development. Therefore, a large number of studies have been conducted to improve their immunogenicity and stability by improving delivery methods, thereby supporting progress and development for clinical applications. This article mainly reviews the advantages, disadvantages, mechanisms, delivery methods, and clinical applications of nucleic acid vaccines.

Highlights

Since the first vaccines were developed over 200 years ago, vaccines have directly decreased the morbidity and mortality caused by dangerous diseases across large human populations (Rappuoli et al, 2011; Koff et al, 2013)
Based on the characteristics and immune mechanisms of the two types of nucleic acid vaccines, DNA vaccines are more frequently used for infectious diseases in clinical trials, while messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are more common in cancer research
Recent studies reported that mRNA-1273 vaccines showed 94.1% efficacy in preventing COVID-19 and no severe adverse reactions except for local and systemic reactions (Baden et al, 2020), which indicated that mRNA vaccines provided a effective and stable platform in infectious diseases treatments

Summary

Introduction

Since the first vaccines were developed over 200 years ago, vaccines have directly decreased the morbidity and mortality caused by dangerous diseases across large human populations (Rappuoli et al, 2011; Koff et al, 2013). Nucleic acid-based vaccines, including DNA (as plasmids) and RNA [as messenger RNA (mRNA)] vaccines, exhibit promising potential in targeting various indications and diseases. Many immunostimulatory molecules encoded by vaccine plasmids, various cytokine genes, and PRR ligands use recombinant DNA technology, which allows them to be co-administered with an antigenic DNA vaccine plasmid to certain cellular compartments or APCs to enhance the immune response (Li and Petrovsky, 2016).

Results

Conclusion