Dear Colleagues,

As the world struggles with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA-based vaccines presented a ray of hope to end this pandemic. The swift development and FDA approval of the RNA-based COVID-19 vaccines reignited the interest in nucleic acid-based vaccine development. Indeed, pandemic pathogens warrant the need for an effective vaccine platform with a potential for rapid turnover to roll out millions of vaccine doses. Nucleic acid vaccines have emerged as a next-generation vaccine platform over the conventional vaccines, such as live attenuated, inactivated and subunit vaccines. The nucleic acid vaccine exploits the central dogma of molecular biology, delivering either DNA or RNA with a genetic message to encode the target immunogen. In this Special Issue, entitled “Nucleic acid vaccines,” a collection of research articles focused on the recent scientific and technical progress made in the field of DNA/RNA vaccines will be presented. Nucleic acid vaccine research, targeting not only the emerging and pandemic pathogens, but also the tropical infectious diseases, will be included under this Special Issue. Most of the viral genomes are either RNA or DNA, encoding the viral proteins. Nucleic acid vaccines mimic natural infection, especially viral infection and, hence, have the ability to elicit both the adaptive and innate immune responses. Moreover, unlike protein-based subunit vaccines, nucleic acid vaccine encoding endogenous antigens are presented by MHC class I, facilitating cellular immune response.

We invite authors to share their research on nucleic acid vaccine development with respect to critical aspects not limited to i) design of vaccine with a potential to effectively respond and protect against pandemic pathogens such as COVID-19; ii) safe and effective vaccine delivery technologies; iii) strategies for cost-effective production and storage stability; iv) unique mechanistic insights into vaccine response, efficacy and long-term protection.  

Dr. Sofia Casares
Dr. Himanshu Batra
Dr. Swati Jain
Guest Editors

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• DNA Vaccine
• RNA Vaccine
• vaccine delivery
• immune responses
• pandemic