An overview of current drugs and prophylactic vaccines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Abstract

Designing and producing an effective vaccine is the best possible way to reduce the burden and spread of a disease. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies invested a great deal of time and money in trying to control and combat the disease. In this regard, due to the urgent need, many vaccines are now available earlier than scheduled. Based on their manufacturing technology, the vaccines available for COVID-19 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SAR-CoV2)) infection can be classified into four platforms: RNA vaccines, adenovirus vector vaccines, subunit (protein-based) vaccines, and inactivated virus vaccines. Moreover, various drugs have been deemed to negatively affect the progression of the infection via various actions. However, adaptive variants of the SARS-CoV-2 genome can alter the pathogenic potential of the virus and increase the difficulty of both drug and vaccine development. In this review, along with drugs used in COVID-19 treatment, currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines as well as variants of the virus are described and evaluated, considering all platforms. Graphical abstract

Animal Cell Lines as Expression Platforms in Viral Vaccine Production: A Post Covid-19 Perspective

“…Traditional vaccine types that have been produced commercially for years; these are inactivated, attenuated, and subunit vaccines. The approval and commercialization processes of newer approaches, such as mRNA, DNA, virus-like particle (VLP), and viral vector vaccines (Table ), have accelerated, especially with epidemics such as Ebola and Zika and with the Covid-19 pandemic. ,,,, …”

“…or physical (temperature, pH, gamma irradiation, etc.) methods. ,, Since it usually contains the inactive form of the entire viral agent or the fragmented entire viral agent, it can create a broad-spectrum immune response. ,,, Since it contains only inactive viral pathogens, it is a very safe vaccine type and is easy to store. In addition, it is a very suitable vaccine type for relatively rapid viral vaccine production following the identification of the virus in a scenario such as a pandemic.…”

“…The success of vaccines, which are the most effective defense to prevent epidemic diseases, has been demonstrated by clinical studies on the morbidity and mortality of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, as in Covid-19 and many other studies . In this sense, the Covid-19 pandemic has once again reminded all of humanity of the importance of vaccination and vaccination. , …”

Blood‐derived product therapies for SARS‐CoV‐2 infection and long COVID

“…From this perspective, the protection provided by vaccines is not only limited to the prevention of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection, but also aids in the treatment of COVID‐19. COVID‐19 vaccines that have received marketing approval or been approved for EUA can be classified into mRNA, inactivated COVID‐19, nonreplicating adenovirus vector, and recombinant S protein subunit vaccines 40 . Fully approved COVID‐19 vaccines were designed to protect against the original SARS‐CoV‐2 strain; however, they cannot provide effective protection against Omicron and its variants.…”

“…COVID-19 vaccines that have received marketing approval or been approved for EUA can be classified into mRNA, inactivated COVID-19, nonreplicating adenovirus vector, and recombinant S protein subunit vaccines. 40 Fully approved COVID-19 vaccines were designed to protect against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain; however, they cannot provide effective protection against Omicron and its variants. Therefore, to reduce the losses caused by the global spread of Omicron variants, updated mRNA vaccines including a monovalent component (XBB.1.5) were granted EUA by the U.S. FDA.…”