Vaccination is the most efficient way to prevent infectious diseases. mRNA-based vaccines is a new approach to vaccine development, which have several very useful advantages over other types of vaccines. Since mRNA encodes only the target antigen there is no potential risk of infection as in the case with attenuated or inactivated pathogens. The mode of action of mRNA-vaccines implies that their genetic information is expressed only in the cytosol, leaving very little possibility of mRNA integration into the host's genome. mRNA-vaccines can induce specific cellular and humoral immune responses, but do not induce the antivector immune response. The mRNA-vaccine platform allows for easy target gene replacement without the need to change the production technology, which is important to address the time lag between the epidemic onset and vaccine release. The present review discusses the history of mRNA vaccines, mRNA vaccine production technology, ways to increase mRNA stability, modifications of the cap, poly(A)-tail, coding and noncoding parts of mRNA, target mRNA vaccine purification from byproducts, and delivery methods.
Keywords: RNA; chemically modified nucleotides; mRNA delivery methods; mRNA vaccines; untranslated 5'- and 3'-regions.
© Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. 2023, ISSN 1068-1620, Russian Journal of Bioorganic Chemistry, 2023, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 220–235. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2023.Russian Text © The Author(s), 2023, published in Bioorganicheskaya Khimiya, 2023, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 134–152.