Emerging viruses and current strategies for vaccine intervention

Abstract

Summary During the past decade several notable viruses have suddenly emerged from obscurity or anonymity to become serious global health threats, provoking concern regarding their sustained epidemic transmission in immunologically naive human populations. With each new threat comes the call for rapid vaccine development. Indeed, vaccines are considered a critical component of disease prevention for emerging viral infections because, in many cases, other medical options are limited or non‐existent, or that infections result in such a rapid clinical deterioration that the effectiveness of therapeutics is limited. While classic approaches to vaccine development are still amenable to emerging viruses, the application of molecular techniques in virology has profoundly influenced our understanding of virus biology, and vaccination methods based on replicating, attenuated and non‐replicating virus vector approaches have become useful vaccine platforms. Together with a growing understanding of viral disease emergence, a range of vaccine strategies and international commitment to underpin development, vaccine intervention for new and emerging viruses may become a possibility.

Global efforts on vaccines for COVID-19: Since, sooner or later, we all will catch the coronavirus

“…Another method involves introducing weakened or attenuated versions of the virus that slowly replicates inside the host cell but provides enough viral antigen to induce an immune response, like the oral polio vaccine, rabies vaccine or the BCG vaccine given at birth to prevent childhood tuberculosis. Administering a nonvirulent organism is less safe than the inactivated virus and has been the cause for disease outbreak, but is much superior in terms of establishing a mild infection necessary for mounting a successful adaptive immune response (Afrough et al 2019). Developing an attenuated vaccine in a short time is, however, challenging as it requires isolating a non-virulent strain through several rounds of time-consuming sub-culturing in the laboratory and requires adequate knowledge about the virulence factors expressed by the coronavirus.…”

Deducing the N- and O-glycosylation profile of the spike protein of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

“…Elucidating the glycosylation of the viral S protein can aid in understanding viral binding with receptors, fusion, entry, replication and also in designing suitable antigens for vaccine development (Chakraborti et al 2005;Zheng et al 2018;Watanabe et al 2019). Strategies for vaccine development aim to elicit such adaptive immunity through an antibody response at the sites of viral entry (Afrough, Dowall, and Hewson 2019).…”

Deducing the N- and O- glycosylation profile of the spike protein of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

“…Elucidating the glycosylation of the viral S protein can aid in understanding viral binding with receptors, fusion, entry, replication and also in designing suitable antigens for vaccine development (Chakraborti, S., Prabakaran, P., et al 2005, Watanabe, Y., Bowden, T.A., et al 2019, Zheng, J., Yamada, Y., et al 2018. Strategies for vaccine development aim to elicit such adaptive immunity through an antibody response at the sites of viral entry (Afrough, B., Dowall, S., et al 2019).…”

“…[13][14][15] Strategies for vaccine development aim to elicit such adaptive immunity through an antibody response at the sites of viral entry. 16 Here, we report the site-specific quantitative N-linked and O-linked glycan profiling on SARS-CoV-2 subunit S1 and S2 protein through glycoproteomics using high resolution LC-MS/MS. We used recombinant SARS-CoV-2 subunit S1 and S2 expressed in human cells, HEK 293 and observed partial N-glycan occupancy on 17 out of 22 N-glycosylation sites.…”