Abstract
Ever since the development of the first vaccine more than 200 years ago, vaccinations have greatly decreased the burden of infectious diseases worldwide, famously leading to the eradication of small pox and allowing the restriction of diseases such as polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and measles. A multitude of research efforts focuses on the improvement of established and the discovery of new vaccines such as the HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine in 2006. However, radical changes in the density, age distribution and traveling habits of the population worldwide as well as the changing climate favor the emergence of old and new pathogens that bear the risk of becoming pandemic threats. In recent years, the rapid spread of severe infections such as HIV, SARS, Ebola, and Zika have highlighted the dire need for global preparedness for pandemics, which necessitates the extremely rapid development and comprehensive distribution of vaccines against potentially previously unknown pathogens. What is more, the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria calls for new approaches to prevent infections. Given these changes, established methods for the identification of new vaccine candidates are no longer sufficient to ensure global protection. Hence, new vaccine technologies able to achieve rapid development as well as large scale production are of pivotal importance. This review will discuss viral vector and nucleic acid-based vaccines (DNA and mRNA vaccines) as new approaches that might be able to tackle these challenges to global health.
Highlights
The world population has grown to 7.6 billion people in 2018, more than half of which live in densely populated urban settings
Further clinical studies testing the efficacy of a comparable mRNA vaccine format against H7N9 (NCT03345043) and Chikungunya (NCT03325075) are currently ongoing with an estimated primary completion date in September 2018 and 2019, respectively. No details of these studies are available as yet. These data show that non-replicating LNPencapsulated mRNA vaccines can induce functional antibody titers at levels associated with protection with acceptable tolerability profiles upon parenteral administration
Future studies that employ lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for encapsulation of non-replicating mRNA targeting diverse and more complex antigens are required to demonstrate the broad applicability of this vaccine platform against pathogens posing potential pandemic threats. Pandemics such as Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Ebola, and Zika have raised the awareness of global threats to human health posed by known as well as newly emerging pathogens and can provide the impetus to prepare against future pandemics by promoting the development of vaccine platforms that can tackle the challenges of outbreak situations
Summary
Edited by: Aldo Tagliabue, Istituto di Ricerca Genetica e Biomedica (IRGB), Italy. Reviewed by: Konrad Stadler, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany Antonella Folgori, ReiThera Srl, Italy. The rapid spread of severe infections such as HIV, SARS, Ebola, and Zika have highlighted the dire need for global preparedness for pandemics, which necessitates the extremely rapid development and comprehensive distribution of vaccines against potentially previously unknown pathogens. The emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria calls for new approaches to prevent infections. Given these changes, established methods for the identification of new vaccine candidates are no longer sufficient to ensure global protection. This review will discuss viral vector and nucleic acid-based vaccines (DNA and mRNA vaccines) as new approaches that might be able to tackle these challenges to global health
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
