Emerging Concepts and Technologies in Vaccine Development

Abstract

Despite the success of vaccination to greatly mitigate or eliminate threat of diseases caused by pathogens, there are still known diseases and emerging pathogens for which the development of successful vaccines against them is inherently difficult. In addition, vaccine development for people with compromised immunity and other pre-existing medical conditions has remained a major challenge. Besides the traditional inactivated or live attenuated, virus-vectored and subunit vaccines, emerging non-viral vaccine technologies, such as viral-like particle and nanoparticle vaccines, DNA/RNA vaccines, and rational vaccine design, offer innovative approaches to address existing challenges of vaccine development. They have also significantly advanced our understanding of vaccine immunology and can guide future vaccine development for many diseases, including rapidly emerging infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, and diseases that have not traditionally been addressed by vaccination, such as cancers and substance abuse. This review provides an integrative discussion of new non-viral vaccine development technologies and their use to address the most fundamental and ongoing challenges of vaccine development.

In silico T cell epitope identification for SARS-CoV-2: Progress and perspectives

“…Briefly, this entailed selecting appropriate linkers, which play a key role in the structural stability of the vaccine, and adjuvants, which help to boost the immune response. These in silico designs spanned a host of modern vaccine technologies, e.g., subunit vaccines, peptide vaccines, RNA and DNA vaccines [ 109 , 110 ]. Almost all SARS-CoV-2 studies that presented an in silico design of a multi-epitope vaccine construct also performed in silico tests for immunogenicity, conservation, allergenicity, and toxicity using the tools reviewed above, regardless of whether or not these tests were performed at the epitope level.…”

Modulation of Antigen Display on PapMV Nanoparticles Influences Its Immunogenicity

“…This suggests that there is an enhancing factor associated with the PapMV-N platform that appears to boost the immune response. PapMV nanoparticles were previously shown to be a strong inducer of secretion of type I interferon (IFN acting though the stimulation of TLR 7 [ 7 , 8 , 9 ] and 8 [ 27 ]. In an attempt to evaluate whether the difference in immunogenicity between the two vaccine platforms is linked to the capacity to induce secretion of IFN, we immunized Balb/C mice once (i.v.)…”

“…To face new viral threats, there is a medical need for vaccine platforms that can be deployed rapidly to face such challenges [ 8 ]. Recently, nucleic-acid-based vaccine platforms have proven very successful in the development of COVID-19 vaccines [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Nevertheless, other vaccine technologies are still needed to lower the cost of production and ensure distribution without the need for a cold chain.…”

Membrane Env liposomes for immunization with HIV spikes

“…With MELs, T helper and B cell epitopes are exclusively from mEnv so may activate B cells efficiently via BCR crosslinking (Chackerian & Peabody, 2020). Size and composition of nanoparticles can affect trafficking in lymphatics as can antigen presentation and processing by dendritic cells (Brisse, Vrba, Kirk, Liang, & Ly, 2020); hence, future studies are warranted to determine whether changing MEL properties can be used to improve immune responses. Mixed MELs may also be prepared using many different Envs to potentially favor activation of B cells against conserved epitopes (Kanekiyo et al, 2019).…”