A Mini-Review: Nanoparticles as Vaccine Delivery System

Abstract

Vaccination has proven to be one of the most important medical breakthroughs in history. Three important features must be present in every vaccine that is effective over time: Safety, stability, and the ability to elicit a sustained and sufficient immune response with a modest number of doses are all important requirements. To develop protective immunity against diseases, vaccinations using attenuated or dead entire animals (first generation), subunit vaccines (second generation), and RNA or DNA vaccines (third generation) have all been employed . Traditional vaccines, on the other hand, have issues such as returning to their virulent condition or only giving protection for a short period of time. As a result of these limitations, scientists have resorted to recombinant proteins, such as subunit vaccines, which target a specific portion of the pathogen. Subunit vaccines are preferred over live or inactivated whole organism vaccines because they are more pure and identified with respect to cell receptoes, have a better safety profile, and are easier to scale up. Despite their advantages, subunit vaccinations have certain disadvantages. For example, most antigens are only mildly immunogenic on their own, necessitating the inclusion of an adjuvant in the formulation.