Peptide and m-RNA Vaccines: Peculiarities of Immunogenicity and Protective Effect

Relevance. Pandemic pathogen variants formation is a pressing issue of modern healthcare system thus classic approaches of preventive measures against infectious diseases require revision including implementation of effective, safe, universal and rapid methods of vaccine production.
Aim. To conduct analysis of scientific literature concerning peculiarities of m-RNA and peptide vaccines. Search of publications was carried out in PubMed, Google Scholar and e-library databases.
Conclusions. In addition to obvious advantages both vaccine platforms have disadvantages. m-RNA vaccines are thermally unstable and need to be stored and transported at temperature not exceeding minus 80 °C which significantly reduces their availability in countries with low income. m-RNA vaccine platform was chosen to manufacture vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in Western countries (USA and Germany) during the COVID-19 pandemic despite the mentioned disadvantage. Most perspective mRNA vaccine prototypes vaccine were designed to combat influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, rabies, malaria, HIV, Ebola virus, Zika virus and cytomegalovirus. Peptide vaccines are undemanding to external factors such as temperature of storage and transportation. On the other hand, they need to be more immunogenic which is achieved by adding various adjuvants. They are also challenging to manufacture due complexity of quaternary structure of protein epitopes of antigens. To date, foreign peptide vaccines against influenza, HIV infection, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, malaria, and leishmaniasis have passed the first and second stages of clinical trials. Both mRNA and peptide vaccines undergo rapid degradation in human body, which prompts scientists to develop new molecular methods for delivering the vaccine matrix to target cells

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