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Review
. 2024 Jan;45(4-6):451-468.
doi: 10.1007/s00281-023-00996-2. Epub 2023 Jul 12.

The role of vaccines in the COVID-19 pandemic: what have we learned?

Florian Krammer  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

The role of vaccines in the COVID-19 pandemic: what have we learned?

Florian Krammer. Semin Immunopathol. 2024 Jan.

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged late in 2019 and caused the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has so far claimed approximately 20 million lives. Vaccines were developed quickly, became available in the end of 2020, and had a tremendous impact on protection from SARS-CoV-2 mortality but with emerging variants the impact on morbidity was diminished. Here I review what we learned from COVID-19 from a vaccinologist's perspective.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Pandemic; SARS-CoV-2; Vaccines.

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Conflict of interest statement

Florian Krammer has been consulting for Curevac, Seqirus and Merck and is currently consulting for Pfizer, Third Rock Ventures, Avimex, and GSK. He is named on several patents regarding influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, influenza virus therapeutics, and SARS-CoV-2 serological tests. Some of these technologies have been licensed to commercial entities and Dr. Krammer is receiving royalties from these entities. Dr. Krammer is also an advisory board member of Castlevax, a spin-off company formed by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to develop SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. The Krammer laboratory has received funding for research projects from Pfizer, GSK, and Dynavax and three of Dr. Krammer’s mentees have recently joined Moderna.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Phylogenetic tree of the Orthocoronavirinae based on the amino acid sequence of the spike protein. The tree was built in Clustal Omega, visualized in FigTree and annotated in Microsoft PowerPoint. The scale bare represents a 7% change in amino acids. Alpha-CoV alphacoronaviruses, Beta-CoV betacoronaviruses, Gamma-CoV gammacoronaviruses, Delta-CoV deltacoronaviruses. Viruses marked with blue stars are either circulating in humans or are known to be human pathogenic. BM48-31, bat coronavirus BM48-31/BGR/2008, GenBank# YP_003858584.1; SARS-CoV, Urbani strain, Genbank# AAP13441.1; SARS-CoV-2, ancestral strain, Genbank# BCN86353.1; HKU3-8, Bat SARS coronavirus HKU3-8, Genbank# ADE34766.1; SX2013, BtRf-BetaCoV/SX2013, Genbank# AIA62300.1; BCoV, bovine coronavirus, GenBank# AAA66399.1; MERS-CoV, MERS-CoV camel/Kenya/C1272/2018, Genbank# AXP07355.1; HKU4, Tylonycteris bat coronavirus HKU4, Genbank# YP_001039953.1; HKU5, Pipistrellus bat coronavirus HKU5, Genbank# YP_001039962.1; HKU9, Rousettus bat coronavirus HKU9, YP_001039971.1; GCCDC1, Rousettus bat coronavirus GCCDC1, Genbank# QKF94914.1; Zhejiang2013, bat Hp-betacoronavirus/Zhejiang2013, Genbank# YP_009915659.1; HKU15-PorCov, porcine coronavirus HKU15 strain HKU15-155, YP_009513021.1; HKU22-BdCoV, bottlenose dolphin coronavirus HKU22 isolate CF090331, Genbank# AHB63508.1; SARS-CoV-2 Omicron, SARS-CoV-2/human/AUT/SKV-282/2021, Genbank# UFT26501.1; 229E, human coronavirus 229E, Genbank# NP_073551.1; NL63, human coronavirus NL63 isolate NL63/RPTEC/2004, Genbank# AFV53148.1; OC43, human coronavirus OC43 isolate HCoV-OC43/FRA_EPI/Caen/2009/11, Genbank# KF963240.1; HKU1, human coronavirus HKU1 strain HKU1/human/USA/HKU1-12/2010, Genbank# AGW27881.1
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Vaccine doses used by December 2021 by producer and technology. The figure is adapted from an original figure published in Nature and is based on data from Airfinity
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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