关键词: 病毒疫苗, 合成生物学, 合成疫苗, 密码子优化疫苗

Abstract:

Infectious diseases caused by viruses seriously endanger public health, and thus pose a great impact on socioeconomic development. Vaccine development is a critical and effective strategy for preventing the spread of infectious diseases to control them effectively. Generally, viral vaccines can be divided into various categories, such as whole virus vaccines (e.g. inactivated virus vaccines, split inactivated vaccines, and live attenuated vaccines), nucleic acid vaccines (DNA and RNA vaccines), recombinant subunits vaccines, and viral vector-based vaccines. However, strategies for developing viral vaccines still face some challenges, such as time-consuming, limited efficacy, and safety concern, which hinder their development, especially for fighting emerging infectious diseases timely. With the rapid development of synthetic biology, novel vaccines, named as synthetic vaccines, including genomic codon-optimized vaccines, nucleic acid vaccines, viral vector vaccines, virus-particle-like vaccines, and cell-based vaccines, have been designed, which can elicit immune protection more effectively. Synthetic biology technologies, such as codon optimization/deoptimization, genetically encoded click chemistry, and bioconjugation, can overcome weaknesses of traditional vaccines, and in the meantime facilitate the development of safe and efficient virus synthetic vaccines, which have been extensively explored. In this review, we summarize the current status of traditional vaccines, and also address the potential applications and advantages of synthetic biology technologies in the development of viral vaccines. At the end, we highlight the challenges of synthetic vaccines, which may provide insights and guidances for their design.

Key words: viral vaccines, synthetic biology, synthetic vaccines, genomic codon-optimized vaccines