mRNA-based modalities for infectious disease management

Mengjie Zhang; Abid Hussain; Haiyin Yang; Jinchao Zhang; Xing-Jie Liang; Yuanyu Huang

doi:10.1007/s12274-022-4627-5

mRNA-based modalities for infectious disease management

Nano Res. 2023;16(1):672-691. doi: 10.1007/s12274-022-4627-5. Epub 2022 Jul 6.

Authors

Mengjie Zhang¹, Abid Hussain¹, Haiyin Yang¹, Jinchao Zhang², Xing-Jie Liang³, Yuanyu Huang^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Life Science, Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, School of Medical Technology (Institute of Engineering Medicine), Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Biotherapy, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecule Science and Pharmaceutics Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081 China.
² Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Diagnosis of the Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Environmental Science, Hebei University, Baoding, 071002 China.
³ Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, CAS Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China, Beijing, 100190 China.
⁴ School of Materials and the Environment, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai, 519085 China.

Abstract

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still rampant all over the world, causing incalculable losses to the world. Major pharmaceutical organizations around the globe are focusing on vaccine research and drug development to prevent further damage caused by the pandemic. The messenger RNA (mRNA) technology has got ample of attention after the success of the two very effective mRNA vaccines during the recent pandemic of COVID-19. mRNA vaccine has been promoted to the core stage of pharmaceutical industry, and the rapid development of mRNA technology has exceeded expectations. Beyond COVID-19, the mRNA vaccine has been tested for various infectious diseases and undergoing clinical trials. Due to the ability of constant mutation, the viral infections demand abrupt responses and immediate production, and therefore mRNA-based technology offers best answers to sudden outbreaks. The need for mRNA-based vaccine became more obvious due to the recent emergence of new Omicron variant. In this review, we summarized the unique properties of mRNA-based vaccines for infectious diseases, delivery technologies, discussed current challenges, and highlighted the prospects of this promising technology in the future. We also discussed various clinical studies as well preclinical studies conducted on mRNA therapeutics for diverse infectious diseases.

Keywords: coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); drug delivery; infectious disease; lipid-nanoparticle; messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine; virus.

Publication types

Review