An overview of COVID-19 vaccine candidates

¹ Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215
² College of Life Science and Bioengineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China
³ School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105
⁴ College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695

^† These authors contributed equally.
^* Corresponding email:
^a Jiayi Kang: connie22@bu.edu,
^b Shiyuan Peng: 1657952632@qq.com,
^c Wenxiao Zhang: wenxiz8@uw.edu,
^d Yue Zuo: yzuo2@ncsu.edu.

Abstract

For the past two years, people worldwide were experiencing one of the most massive pandemics, the COVID-19. It is caused by a virus that is called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which mainly attacks the respiratory system. Since there is no previous experience treating the disease, the drug development process is extremely difficult. People in dire need of vaccines were urgently needed to restore their lives to normal. As time went by, medical staff and experts spent numerous amounts of time and effort studying this virus. Nowadays, as the vaccine technology of various countries was very mature, vaccines with various technological paths have entered the experimental stage one after another. Eventually, effective vaccines are finally ready for wild inoculation for everyone by collaborating with all medical researchers. Currently, there are four kinds of COVID-19 vaccines available in different countries. They are inactivated vaccines, mRNA-based vaccines, viral vector vaccines, and recombinant vaccines. Most of these COVID-19 vaccines are in Phase 3 and provided in different countries. Those vaccines were manufactured in different countries, and their general production and technical characteristics will be discussed in the following paragraphs. The main purpose is trying to provide some fundamental and comprehensive background knowledge about currently available COVID-19 vaccines. It could be a reference list for those audiences who have not decided to take which vaccine.