mRNA as a Therapeutics: Understanding mRNA Vaccines

Abstract

Vaccination is one of the important approaches in the prevention and control of diseases. Although the capacity to present antigens other than the disease-specific antigen in the traditional vaccine composition provides a potential benefit by increasing its protective efficacy, many components that are not needed for the related disease are also transferred. These components can reduce vaccine activity by lowering immunity against protective antigens. The reasons such as the low effectiveness of traditional vaccines and the high cost of production and time-consuming reasons show that it is necessary to develop a new vaccine method for our world, which is struggling with epidemics almost every year. Among nucleic acids, mRNA has many advantages, such as genomic integration, induction of anti-DNA autoantibodies, and immune tolerance induced by long-term antigen expression. mRNA vaccines have become a therapeutic target for reasons such as efficacy, safety, fast and non-expensive production. The fact that mRNA triggers both humoral and cellular immunity and goes only to the cytoplasm, not to the nucleus, makes it highly efficient. The mRNA must cross the lipid bilayer barrier and entry to the cytoplasm where it is translated into protein. There are two main ways of mRNA vaccine delivery for this: ex vivo loading of mRNA into dendritic cells (DCs) and direct injection of mRNA with or without a carrier. Studies continue to understand which delivery system is therapeutically more efficient. Preclinical and clinical trials showed that mRNA vaccines trigger a long-lasting and safe immune response.