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Review
. 2021 Aug:301:198454.
doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2021.198454. Epub 2021 May 17.

The COVID-19 vaccine development: A pandemic paradigm

Diego C Carneiro  1 , Jéssica D Sousa  1 , Joana P Monteiro-Cunha  2
Affiliations
Review

The COVID-19 vaccine development: A pandemic paradigm

Diego C Carneiro et al. Virus Res. 2021 Aug.

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in millions of deaths and a social-economic crisis. A worldwide effort was made to develop efficient vaccines for this disease. A vaccine should produce immune responses with specific and neutralizing antibodies, and without harmful effects such as the antibody-dependent enhancement that may be associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome. Vaccine design involves the selection of platforms that includes viral, viral-vector, protein, nucleic acid, or trained immunity-based strategies. Its development initiates at a pre-clinical stage, followed by clinical trials when successful. Only if clinical trials show no significant evidence of safety concerns, vaccines can be manufactured, stored, and distributed to immunize the population. So far, regulatory authorities from many countries have approved nine vaccines with phase 3 results. In the current pandemic, a paradigm for the COVID-19 vaccine development has arisen, as many challenges must be overcome. Mass-production and cold-chain storage to immunize large human populations should be feasible and fast, and a combination of different vaccines may boost logistics and immunization. In silico trials is an emerging and innovative field that can be applied to predict and simulate immune, molecular, clinical, and epidemiological outcomes of vaccines to refine, reduce, and partially replace steps in vaccine development. Vaccine-resistant variants of SARS-CoV-2 might emerge, leading to the necessity of updates. A globally fair vaccine distribution system must prevail over vaccine nationalism for the world to return to its pre-pandemic status.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Emergency use; SARS-CoV-2; Vaccine safety; Vaccine strategies.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flowchart of the major steps before vaccines reach the population. Passing the pre-clinical stage, the vaccines undergo clinical trials from small to larger groups of people. If the vaccines render significant efficacy and safety, they can be manufactured in large scale, stored and distributed until vaccinations are complete.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Applications of in silico trials in vaccine development. Each vaccine development stage can use bioinformatics approaches to process and analyze viral molecular data by omics technologies and clinical and epidemiological data. The predicted data can be further deposited in vaccine databases that are used to refine, reduce, and partially replace steps in vaccine development.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Total number vaccine single doses administered (A) and total number of people fully vaccinated (B) for COVID-19 per country. Single doses do not represent the number of people fully vaccinated as many vaccines require two-dose regimen for complete immunization.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
World map showing the share of the country population who achieved full vaccination. This map shows the percentage of the country population who received all required doses prescribed by the vaccines for complete immunization.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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