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Review
. 2021 Jul 7:12:679344.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.679344. eCollection 2021.

From COVID-19 to Cancer mRNA Vaccines: Moving From Bench to Clinic in the Vaccine Landscape

Chiranjib Chakraborty  1   2 , Ashish Ranjan Sharma  2 , Manojit Bhattacharya  3 , Sang-Soo Lee  2
Affiliations
Review

From COVID-19 to Cancer mRNA Vaccines: Moving From Bench to Clinic in the Vaccine Landscape

Chiranjib Chakraborty et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Recently, mRNA vaccines have become a significant type of therapeutic and have created new fields in the biopharmaceutical industry. mRNA vaccines are promising next-generation vaccines that have introduced a new age in vaccinology. The recent approval of two COVID-19 mRNA vaccines (mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2) has accelerated mRNA vaccine technology and boosted the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. These mRNA vaccines will help to tackle COVID-19 pandemic through immunization, offering considerable hope for future mRNA vaccines. Human trials with data both from mRNA cancer vaccines and mRNA infectious disease vaccines have provided encouraging results, inspiring the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to focus on this area of research. In this article, we discuss current mRNA vaccines broadly in two parts. In the first part, mRNA vaccines in general and COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are discussed. We presented the mRNA vaccine structure in general, the different delivery systems, the immune response, and the recent clinical trials for mRNA vaccines (both for cancer mRNA vaccines and different infectious diseases mRNA vaccines). In the second part, different COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are explained. Finally, we illustrated a snapshot of the different leading mRNA vaccine developers, challenges, and future prospects of mRNA vaccines.

Keywords: BNT162b2; COVID-19; mRNA vaccine developers; mRNA vaccines; mRNA-1273.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The number of publications in PubMed in the mRNA vaccine area from 2018 to 2020. The PubMed search was performed using the “mRNA vaccine” keyword on 10th Jan 2021.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Timeline of the research breakthrough and progression of mRNA vaccine.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Critical parts of mRNA vaccine construct (A) Critical parts of mRNA vaccine constructs in general (B) Critical parts of two specific types of mRNA vaccine constructs [Non-replicating mRNA (NRM) vaccine and Self-amplifying mRNA (SAM) vaccine].
Figure 4
Figure 4
A schematic diagram which explains the pathways from vaccination to immune system activation for the two categories of mRNA vaccine [One for SAM vaccine constructs and other for NRM vaccine constructs].
Figure 5
Figure 5
mRNA vaccines based immune response (A) mRNA vaccine based adaptive immune response (B) mRNA vaccine based innate immune response.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Different significant COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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