Despite the vital role of vaccines in fighting viral pathogens,
effective vaccines are still unavailable for many infectious
diseases. The importance of vaccines cannot be overstated during
the outbreak of a pandemic, such as the coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) pandemic. The understanding of genomics, structural
biology, and innate/adaptive immunity have expanded the toolkits
available for current vaccine development. However, sudden
outbreaks and the requirement of population-level immunization
still pose great challenges in today’s vaccine designs.
Well-established vaccine development protocols from previous
experiences are in place to guide the pipelines of vaccine
development for emerging viral diseases. Nevertheless, vaccine
development may follow different paradigms during a pandemic.
For example, multiple vaccine candidates must be pushed into
clinical trials simultaneously, and manufacturing capability
must be scaled up in early stages. Factors from essential
features of safety, efficacy, manufacturing, and distributions
to administration approaches are taken into consideration based
on advances in materials science and engineering technologies.
In this review, we present recent advances in vaccine
development by focusing on vaccine discovery, formulation, and
delivery devices enabled by alternative administration
approaches. We hope to shed light on developing better solutions
for faster and better vaccine development strategies through the
use of biomaterials, biomolecular engineering, nanotechnology,
and microfabrication techniques.