Over 90 vaccine candidates are being developed as part of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A snapshot of the eight different ways to elicit host immunity with vaccines under development is given in a guide by Ewen Callaway in a recent Nature article. Candidates can take the form of inactivated virus, viral vectors, nucleic acid, protein/peptide based and virus like particles. Some have already entered phase I and others remain in the exploratory stage. There is also a concerted effort to form public-private partnerships to speed up the process.

References

• Callaway 2020. The race for coronavirus vaccines: a graphical guide. Nature
• Thanh Le et al., 2020. The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape. Nature

SOURCE: www.immunopaedia.org.za/breaking-news/an-inventory-of-the-vaccine-candidates-to-sars-cov-2