6.4 Other Vaccine Approaches
Aside from the aforementioned approaches, Genexine Inc. is exploring a
new vaccine via utilizing the Hyleukin-7 platform technology (Genexine,
2020). Such a platform may improve the immune responses fusing IL-7 with
hyFc, aiming to hybridize IgD and IgG4 for the long-term effect of Fc
fusion proteins. Specifically, IgD possesses a flexible hinge structure
and can maximize the biological activity (Genexine, 2020; Seo et al.,
2014). IgG4 possesses an unexposed junction site that mitigates
immunogenicity via preventing antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity
(Løset et al., 2004; J.-H. Lee et al., 2013). This corporation reported
enhanced vaccine efficacy, lung T cell accumulation, and plasmacytoid
dendritic cell growth after Fc-fused IL-7 treatment in the virus
infection models (Kang et al., 2017).
Conclusions and inspirations
Despite
prodigious global efforts made to contain SARS-CoV-2, the current
COVID-19 epidemic has expanded into a full-blown pandemic, yielding
outright panic and economic slowdown. Health-care systems in many
regions are overburdened and under-resourced, impelling medical workers
and governors to make formerly unthinkable judgments concerning the
allotment of medical care. In the wake of such a severe situation, a
number of researches have trailed strategies to tackling the direct
impact of COVID-19, either by modeling studies of the viral activity or
via parsing out potential therapeutic options and finding a vaccine to
end the coronavirus pandemic. Although the development of therapeutics
and vaccines for the COVID-19 therapy is still in its middle stage, some
marked advances have been made from complete genome sequencing of
SARS-CoV-2 to the clinical practice of COVID-19 vaccines.
Rapid genome-wide association of SARS-CoV-2, along with international
sharing of information, enabled us to generate rapider and more proper
diagnostic tools. As set forth, the major fashioned diagnostic tools are
qRT-PCR-based approaches, requiring a long time for specimen preparation
and analysis, thus putting off the imperative actions for COVID-19
infections. Of note,
In acute respiratory infections, RT-PCR is commonly utilized for
detecting pathogenic viruses in respiratory secretions. The positive
rate of PCR from oropharyngeal swabs is not very high, implicating the
requirement of more swab testing are need to confirm the diagnosis. With
the continuous spread of SARS-CoV-2, there is a desperate demand to
develop rapid diagnostic methods that can be tested more efficiently.
According to reports, certain drugs are known to effectively treat
patients with COVID-19. Nevertheless, the lack of clinical data may
render the clinical prognosis difficult to predict. In addition to the
judicious design of novel therapeutics that target viral replication or
immunopathology, currently, rapid screening of therapeutic agents to
repurpose FDA-approved and well-characterized agents might be a more
workable method. Considering the severity of the recent zoonotic
coronavirus outbreaks, therapeutic drugs for pancoronavirus should be
carried out to cope with future outbreaks.
With respect to the detailed exploitation of COVID-19 vaccines, several
pharmaceutical corporations and institutions have also launched the
project for vaccine development. Notwithstanding, the commercial market
for vaccines, especially vaccines for emerging infectious diseases, is
confined by the high cost and time required for vaccine development
along with the uncertainty of profitability. Accordingly, CEPI is
combining efforts to encourage the progress of vaccines against
COVID-19. Besides, in the near future, the production of a lot of
vaccines may bring about the challenge in scaling up manufacturing
quickly, because the infrastructure needed will differ in virtue of the
vaccine type. Another concern regarding the vaccine development may be
the antibody-dependent enhancement issue.
In addition, this global epidemic crisis indicated that host-species
expansion or interspecies transmission of neoteric coronavirus to humans
might be unavoidable. Clinicians and researchers should combine efforts
to swiftly evolve our perception of all facets of SARS-CoV-2 infections
and fill in the gaps concerning the emergence of this virus. Ultimately,
we can also learn from this epidemic that we need to improve our disease
monitoring and surveillance system to prevent such a serious disease
outbreak. Digital technologies such as big-data analytics, artificial
intelligence, and blockchain technology may also need to be fully
exploited and developed, thereby enabling real-time data collection at
scale and modeling risk associations immediately to contain the
pathophoresis.
Overall, the challenges posed by twenty-first century epidemics are real
and changing: future epidemics will be fueled by various internal and
external causes. In our response, we must view pandemics as
interconnected cycles, not isolated events, and while we cannot forecast
specific outbreaks, we can make provision for them.