Since the onset of the pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines have demonstrated outstanding performance. mRNA vaccines offer significant advantages over conventional vaccines in production speed and cost-effectiveness, making them an attractive option against other viral diseases. This article reviewed recent advances in viral mRNA vaccines and their delivery systems to provide references and guidance for developing mRNA vaccines for new viral diseases.

The mRNA vaccine technology was developed rapidly during the global pandemic of COVID-19. The crucial role of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in preventing viral infection also have been beneficial to the exploration and application of other viral mRNA vaccines, especially for non-replication structure mRNA vaccines of viral disease with outstanding research results. Therefore, this review pays attention to the existing mRNA vaccines, which are of great value for candidates for clinical applications in viral diseases. We provide an overview of the optimization of the mRNA vaccine development process as well as the good immune efficacy and safety shown in clinical studies. In addition, we also provide a brief description of the important role of mRNA immunomodulators in the treatment of viral diseases. After that, it will provide a good reference or strategy for research on mRNA vaccines used in clinical medicine with more stable structures, higher translation efficiency, better immune efficacy and safety, shorter production time, and lower production costs than conditional vaccines to be used as preventive or therapeutic strategy for the control of viral diseases in the future.

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) internal capsid protein (VP4) conserves in picornaviridae family and plays critical role in viral infection and replication by unknown mechanisms. In this study, mRNA sequencing was performed to analyze Differentially Expressional Genes (DEGs) in VP4 protein overexpressing Human Rhabdomyosarcoma Cells. It had been showed that Focal Adhesion, PI3K/AKT and MAPK pathways were mainly activated by the significant DEGs. Co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) assay indicated that ITGA5 of DEGs interacted with VP4. After knockdown of the ITGA5, WB showed that PI3K/AKT and MAPK pathways were activated, RT-qPCR experiments confirmed that viral copies were increasing. Thus, it is indicated that viral replication probably can be promoted by VP4 protein with activating the PI3K/AKT and MAPK pathways and a subsequent interaction with ITGA5.