Zhao, Z.; Bashiri, S.; Ziora, Z.M.; Toth, I.; Skwarczynski, M. COVID-19 Variants and Vaccine Development. Preprints2024, 2024011746. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202401.1746.v1
APA Style
Zhao, Z., Bashiri, S., Ziora, Z.M., Toth, I., & Skwarczynski, M. (2024). COVID-19 Variants and Vaccine Development. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202401.1746.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Zhao, Z., Istvan Toth and Mariusz Skwarczynski. 2024 "COVID-19 Variants and Vaccine Development" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202401.1746.v1
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 virus (SARS-CoV-2) infection, has caused millions of infections and fatalities worldwide. Extensive SARS-CoV-2 research has been conducted to develop therapeutic drugs and prophylactic vaccines, and even though some drugs have been approved to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection, treatment efficacy remains limited. Therefore, preventive vaccination has been implemented on a global scale and represents the primary approach to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Approved vaccines vary in composition, although vaccine design has been based on either the key viral structural (spike) protein or viral components carrying this protein. Therefore, mutations of the virus, particularly mutations in the S protein, severely compromise effectiveness of current vaccines and the ability to control COVID-19 infection. This review begins by describing the SARS-CoV-2 viral composition, mechanism of infection, role of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, host defense responses against infection and the most common vaccine designs. Next, this review summarizes the common mutations of SARS-CoV-2 and how these mutations change viral properties, confer immune escape and influence vaccine efficacy. Finally, this review discusses global strategies that have been employed to mitigate the decreases in vaccine efficacy encountered against new variants.
Biology and Life Sciences, Immunology and Microbiology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
