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Review
. 2023 Aug 23;15(9):1786.
doi: 10.3390/v15091786.

COVID-19 Vaccines over Three Years after the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Epidemic

Aleksandra Anna Zasada  1 , Aniela Darlińska  1 , Aldona Wiatrzyk  1 , Katarzyna Woźnica  1 , Kamila Formińska  1 , Urszula Czajka  1 , Małgorzata Główka  1 , Klaudia Lis  1 , Paulina Górska  1
Affiliations
Review

COVID-19 Vaccines over Three Years after the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Epidemic

Aleksandra Anna Zasada et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 started in December 2019 and spread rapidly all over the world. It became clear that the development of an effective vaccine was the only way to stop the pandemic. It was the first time in the history of infectious diseases that the process of the development of a new vaccine was conducted on such a large scale and accelerated so rapidly. At the end of 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccines were approved for marketing. At the end of March 2023, over three years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 199 vaccines were in pre-clinical development and 183 in clinical development. The candidate vaccines in the clinical phase are based on the following platforms: protein subunit, DNA, RNA, non-replication viral vector, replicating viral vector, inactivated virus, virus-like particles, live attenuated virus, replicating viral vector combined with an antigen-presenting cell, non-replication viral vector combined with an antigen-presenting cell, and bacterial antigen-spore expression vector. Some of the new vaccine platforms have been approved for the first time for human application. This review presents COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the world, procedures for assurance of the quality and safety of the vaccines, the vaccinated population, as well as future perspectives for the new vaccine platforms in drug and therapy development for infectious and non-infectious diseases.

Keywords: COVID-19; DNA vaccine; VLP vaccine; mRNA vaccine; vaccine; vaccine quality; vaccine safety; vector-based vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
COVID-19 vaccine development dynamics from the beginning of the pandemic.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) The number of candidate vaccines and vaccine platforms; (b) the vaccines approved in at least in one country.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Total COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus—last updated 28 July 2023).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Share of people who completed the initial COVID-19 vaccination protocol. (https://ourworldindata.org/—last updated 28 July 2023).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Number of mRNA patents for the top 20 disease types, according to Li et al. [90].
Figure 6
Figure 6
The annual number of published journal articles (left) and patents (right) on mRNA therapeutics and vaccines, according to Li et al. [90]. The data for 2022 include extrapolated numbers for October to December 2022.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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