Promoting versatile vaccine development for emerging pandemics

Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of rapid and versatile development of emergency medical countermeasures such as vaccines. We discuss the role of platform vaccines and prototype pathogen research in modern vaccine development, and outline how previous pathogen-specific funding approaches can be improved to adequately promote vaccine R&D for emerging pandemics. We present a more comprehensive approach to financing vaccine R&D, which maximises biomedical pandemic preparedness by promoting flexible vaccine platforms and translatable research into prototype pathogens. As the numerous platform-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines show, funders can accelerate pandemic vaccine development by proactively investing in versatile platform technologies. For certain emerging infectious diseases, where vaccine research can translate to other related pathogens with pandemic potential, investment decisions should reflect the full social value of increasing overall preparedness, rather than just the value of bringing a vaccine to market for individual pathogens.

Rapid Proliferation of Pandemic Research: Implications for Dual-Use Risks

“…Less risky alternatives to solving antivector immunity include expanding the vector portfolio to include nonhuman viruses and focusing efforts on nongenetic modifications which are not passed onto viral progeny, such as PEGylation ( 26 , 27 ). Especially promising may be preferential investment into mRNA-based vaccines which both exhibit excellent properties as fast response platforms and are associated with few dual-use risks ( 23 , 28 , 29 ).…”

Nanovaccines against Animal Pathogens: The Latest Findings

“…These cells will process antigens and carry out cross-presentation to T-cells for activation enabling a cellular immune response. All this takes place in a five-step "cascade" involving antigen functionalisation, drainage to lymph nodes, internalisation by presenting cells, presenting cell maturation and MHC-I-peptide immunocomplex presentation to T-cells [75]. The latter may be equally problematic since cell infection by pathogens and classical endogenous processing itself down-regulates MHC expression, potentially altering the immune responses (80).…”

“…Nanoplatform infrastructures provide improved efficacy in relation to conventional vaccines and marketable tools to fight infectious diseases involving negligible financial risk. Although not the panacea, the future of vaccine research and development may pass through nanoplatform-based approaches for many pathogens [ 75 , 93 , 94 ]. NPs have different roles in vaccinology mainly as adjuvants, carriers, and platforms.…”

The Knife Edge Election of 2020: American Politics Between Washington, Kabul, and Weimar

“…Note that parallel efforts to produce remedial treatments did not meet with the same success and the vaccine roll out was much less than ideal. On the defects of private markets for vaccine production, see, e.g., (Monrad, Sandbrink, & Cherian, 2021). See also the notable series of articles on vaccine production by (Lazonick, Tulum, & Jacobson, 2021).…”