Vaccines: their development and importance in medicine

1 Vaccines, a research paper by budding writers Vaccines are medication substances that protect an individual's body from certain diseases. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018) defines vaccines as products that help stimulate an individual's immune system to protect the body from a specific disease by producing immunity. Most of the vaccines are administered to a person through needle injections. However, the administration can also be oral or through the nose. According to Vetter et al. (2017), vaccines have been among the most outstanding achievements in public health worldwide over the past century. The researchers report that vaccines save over two million lives yearly and have significantly minimized several severe diseases, eradicating some, such as smallpox. Vetter et al. (2017) also note that a single vaccine can prevent several infectious diseases. Therefore, healthcare vaccines are crucial to saving millions of lives by protecting the body from certain dangerous illnesses. Scientists and healthcare officers must understand various vaccines' actions, their benefits, and the risks they can pose to human health.

Several scientists have contributed to the innovation that resulted in vaccines that have significantly prevented infections from various diseases. According to Iwasaki and Omer (2020), scientists have developed several vaccines, including live attenuated, killed pathogens, and subunits vaccines containing antigens that have prevented possible diseases. The two researchers indicate that various conditions, from influenza to rotavirus, have become vaccine-preventable.

With the increasing technological advancements in medicine, the techniques for developing vaccines have changed. Scientists are now focusing on rational design techniques; sequencing and bioinformatics tools have made this possible. However, Ramirez, Sharpe, and Peppas (2020) report persistent infectious diseases to cause several deaths. This finding recommends that health sectors develop a safe and blockbuster technique for administering vaccines to prevent the

2 conditions that still emerge. Moreover, Ramirez, Sharpe, and Peppas (2020) advise oral vaccination preference over needle injection because it is safer and easy to manufacture and administer. Thus, the healthcare sector should continue with thorough research to assess areas and vaccines requiring adjustments and develop newer vaccines for infectious diseases that seem persistent.

Over the years, there has been continuous development in vaccines, including the addition of adjuvants. Didierlaurent et al. (2016) state that adjuvants enhance antigen presentation to specific immune cells, antigen-specific, to provide long-term protection, thus improving vaccine immunogenicity and potency. According to their report, adjuvanted vaccines have existed for almost a century, paving the way for better vaccine advancements and development. Also, they refer to adjuvants as immunostimulatory molecules. O’Hagan et al.

(2017) report that new-generation adjuvants facilitate vaccines' effectiveness by initiating a localized activation signal to the natural immune system, thus, enhancing adaptive immunity.

Due to such rapid advancements in vaccine development, researchers should study more about adjuvanted vaccines' safety and effectiveness.

Scientists may still be struggling to develop effective vaccines for specific diseases.

According to Hu, Ott, and Wu (2018), several past efforts to develop vaccines to mitigate cancerous diseases were unsuccessful despite the clear rationale. Most cancer vaccines work by increasing the responses of tumor-specific cells. These researchers' report indicates that bioinformatics and sequencing enable scientists to discover tumor neoantigens that can significantly contribute to the success of developing highly potent cancer vaccines. Pardi et al.

(2018) state in their research report that mRNA vaccines – a new era in vaccinology- have high potency, low manufacturing costs, can be developed rapidly, and are safe to administer. The

3 mRNA vaccines seem promising for the prevention of cancerous diseases. The promising signs that such vaccines and technological advancements indicate that healthcare scientists should continue researching how to improve vaccines to save more lives. Also, they should thoroughly assess the safety of new vaccines to ensure no possible side effects.

Despite the successful development of vaccines for several diseases, there are still numerous pathogens and infections for scientists have not succeeded in innovating effective vaccines. Zhou et al. (2020) report that novel vaccines for several infectious diseases are still unavailable. The authors recognize that the challenge persists due to the sudden outbreak of new infections, such as COVID-19, and the significant world population challenges the vaccine designs. The latest episodes differ from previous diseases, making it challenging to develop vaccines using similar procedures or techniques. According to Zhou et al. (2020), careful consideration is necessary for engineering technologies and science to ensure the safety and potency of the vaccines from the manufacturing phase to their administration. Vaccines have significantly contributed to saving millions of lives worldwide; thus, every government or health institution should put more effort into developing new vaccines for persistent diseases. The focus should also be on advancing current vaccines by using adjuvants to prevent illnesses that may result from mutations of previously vaccine-eradicated infections.

4 References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). Immunization: The Basics | Vaccines, and Immunizations | CDC. Cdc.gov. Retrieved 9 January 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm.

Didierlaurent, A. M., Laupèze, B., Di Pasquale, A., Hergli, N., Collignon, C., & Garçon, N. (2017). Adjuvant system AS01: helping to overcome the challenges of modern vaccines. Expert review of vaccines, 16(1), 55-63. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14760584.2016.1213632 Hu, Z., Ott, P. A., & Wu, C. J. (2018). Towards personalized, tumour-specific, therapeutic vaccines for cancer. Nature Reviews Immunology, 18(3), 168. https://www.nature.com/articles/nri.2017.131.pdf?origin=ppub Iwasaki, A., & Omer, S. B. (2020). Why and how vaccines work. Cell, 183(2), 290-295. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742031237X Pardi, N., Hogan, M. J., Porter, F. W., & Weissman, D. (2018). mRNA vaccines—a new era in vaccinology. Nature reviews Drug discovery, 17(4), 261. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243.pdf?origin=ppub Ramirez, J. E. V., Sharpe, L. A., & Peppas, N. A. (2017). Current state and challenges in developing oral vaccines. Advanced drug delivery reviews, 114, 116-131. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169409X17300431 T O’Hagan, D., Friedland, L. R., Hanon, E., & Didierlaurent, A. M. (2017). Towards an evidence based approach for the development of adjuvanted vaccines. Current opinion in immunology, 47, 93-102. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0952791516301078

5 Vetter, V., Denizer, G., Friedland, L. R., Krishnan, J., & Shapiro, M. (2018). Understanding modern-day vaccines: what you need to know. Annals of medicine, 50(2), 110-120. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07853890.2017.1407035 Zhou, X., Jiang, X., Qu, M., Aninwene, G. E., Jucaud, V., Moon, J. J., ... & Khademhosseini, A. (2020). Engineering Antiviral Vaccines. ACS nano, 14(10), 12370-12389. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.0c06109