Nucleic Acid Vaccines for COVID-19: A Paradigm Shift in the Vaccine Development Arena

Coronavirus disease, COVID-19, has touched every country globally except five countries (North Korea, Turkmenistan, Tonga, Tuvalu and Nauru). Vaccination is the most effective method to protect against infectious diseases. The objective is to ensure that everyone has access to a COVID-19 vaccine. The conventional vaccine development platforms are complex and time-consuming to obtain desired approved vaccine candidates through rigorous regulatory pathways. These safeguards guarantee that the optimized vaccine product is safe and efficacious for various demographic populations prior to it being approved for general use. Nucleic acid vaccines employ genetic material from a pathogen, such as a virus or bacteria, to induce an immune response against it. Based on the vaccination, the genetic material might be DNA or RNA; as such, it offers instructions for producing a specific pathogen protein that the immune system will perceive as foreign and mount an immune response. Nucleic acid vaccines for multiple antigens might be made in the same facility, lowering costs even more. Most traditional vaccine regimens do not allow for this. Herein, we demonstrate the recent understanding and advances in nucleic acid vaccines (DNA and mRNA based) against COVID-19, specifically those in human clinical trials.