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Review
. 2023 Jan 12:13:1091797.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.1091797. eCollection 2022.

Research progress on circular RNA vaccines

Yu Bai  1   2   3 , Dong Liu  1   2   3 , Qian He  1   2   3 , Jianyang Liu  1   2   3 , Qunying Mao  1   2   3 , Zhenglun Liang  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Research progress on circular RNA vaccines

Yu Bai et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Owing to the success of linear mRNA coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines, biopharmaceutical companies and research teams worldwide have attempted to develop more stable circular RNA (circRNA) vaccines and have achieved some preliminary results. This review aims to summarize key findings and important progress made in circRNA research, the in vivo metabolism and biological functions of circRNAs, and research progress and production process of circRNA vaccines. Further, considerations regarding the quality control of circRNA vaccines are highlighted herein, and the main challenges and problem-solving strategies in circRNA vaccine development and quality control are outlined to provide a reference for circRNA vaccine-related research.

Keywords: circular RNA vaccines; outlook; production process; quality control; research progress.

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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
Key discoveries and advances in research on circRNAs.
Figure 2
Figure 2
In vivo and in vitro (artificial) RNA circularization methods. (A–D) In vivo RNA circularization methods: (A) Exonic circRNA; (B) Exonic-intronic circRNA; (C) Intronic circRNA; (D) tRNA intronic circRNA; (E, F) In vitro (artificial) RNA circularization methods: (E) Chemical synthesis; (F) Ligation by T4 RNA ligase; (G) Intron self-splicing. BrCN, cyanogen bromide; EDC, 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide; GOI, gene of interest.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Methods currently used to formulate circRNA vaccines. (A) Circularization by intron splicing; (B) Ligation by T4 RNA ligase. GOI, gene of interest.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Process flow diagram of circRNA vaccine productions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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