AUTHOR=Lundstrom Kenneth TITLE=The Current Status of COVID-19 Vaccines JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genome Editing VOLUME=2 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genome-editing/articles/10.3389/fgeed.2020.579297 DOI=10.3389/fgeed.2020.579297 ISSN=2673-3439 ABSTRACT=

The current COVID-19 pandemic has substantially accelerated the demands for efficient vaccines. A wide spectrum of approaches includes live attenuated and inactivated viruses, protein subunits and peptides, viral vector-based delivery, DNA plasmids, and synthetic mRNA. Preclinical studies have demonstrated robust immune responses, reduced viral loads and protection against challenges with SARS-CoV-2 in rodents and primates. Vaccine candidates based on all delivery systems mentioned above have been subjected to clinical trials in healthy volunteers. Phase I clinical trials have demonstrated in preliminary findings good safety and tolerability. Evaluation of immune responses in a small number of individuals has demonstrated similar or superior levels of neutralizing antibodies in comparison to immunogenicity detected in COVID-19 patients. Both adenovirus- and mRNA-based vaccines have entered phase II and study protocols for phase III trials with 30,000 participants have been finalized.