Table 1.
Platforms used for the development and production of vaccines.
| Type of Vaccine | Development | Invention Year | Target Desease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attenuated pathogen | Through physicochemical treatments, the pathogen loses features that allow an effective infection. Due to the intact antigens on the membrane surface, they can be recognized by the immune system. | 1798 | Smallpox |
| Dead/inactivated pathogen | Through physicochemical treatments, the bacterial pathogen is killed and viral pathogen is inactivated. It cannot infect, but the antigens must remain on the membrane to be recognized by the immune system. | 1896 | Typhoid |
| Toxoids | The bacterial toxins are attenuated with chemical agents such as formaldehyde or the effects of heat, preserving their high immunogenicity. | 1923 | Diphtheria |
| Protein subunits | They contain only harmless proteins of the microorganism. They are made by recombinant expression in cell models such as bacteria or fungi, or obtained by lysis of the pathogen, but the proteins that join to the host’s receptors are preserved to protect their three-dimensional conformation. | 1970 | Anthrax |
| Viral particles | The structural proteins of the pathogen are assembled using a matrix (which can be a lipid bilayer) which allows simulating the pathogen’s spatial conformation without genetic content. They have high immunogenicity since most of the pathogen’s proteins are present. | 1986 | Hepatitis B |
| Viral Vectors | These are genetically modified viruses, which have already been well characterized. The genetic content is eliminated, except for those genes that give a cell the ability to infect. The removed genetic material is replaced by that that is of interest (DNA or mRNA *) and incorporated into the virus for protection and transport. Once the vector comes into contact with human cells, it instructs them to produce a protein exclusive for the microorganism. Thus, the body begins to manufacture components of the immune system. Most of these viral vectors cannot replicate. | 2019 | Ebola |
| Nucleic acids | They can be DNA or mRNA. In both cases, the genetic material is protected by a nanoparticle, mainly lipids, since it becomes permeable to the phospholipid bilayer of the cell membrane. DNA travels through the cytosol until incorporated into the nucleus, where it is transcribed into mRNA and later translated into a chain of amino acids. Something similar happens with the mRNA, but it does not enter the nucleus, instead passsing directly to the ribosomes to synthesize the chain of amino acids. Finally, this genetic material allows the production of pathogenic proteins which will be expressed at the membrane surface level, thus achieving the creation of antigens through our cells, which will stimulate the immune system. | 2020 | SARS-CoV-2 |