Discussing Nanoparticle and Adenovirus Vaccine Platforms

The COVID-19 pandemic brought vaccine research and development to the forefront of the global conversation. Investigators worked tirelessly to create therapies that would aid in, and hopefully bring to an end, one of the worlds worst public health crises in recent memory.

Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, like those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, were some of the first and most successful to be adopted and rolled out into inoculation efforts.

However, other platforms have also been heavily researched and developed into efficacious, safe vaccines. The two most notable are perhaps adenovirus vaccines, like the one created by Johnson & Johnson, and nanoparticle vaccines, like the one created by Novavax.

To gain a more thorough understanding of these two vaccine platforms, Contagion sat down with Doctors Daniel Kulp and Hildegund C.J. Ertl, professors in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy center at the Wistar Institute.

The Wistar Institute, based in Philadelphia, is a global leader in biomedical research with special expertise in cancer, immunology, infectious diseases and vaccine development.

In the discussion, we talk about the mechanisms of action of the adenovirus and nanoparticle vaccines, the properties of the vaccines, efficacies, immunogenicity, associated risks, lessons learned from their development and implementation and other diseases the platforms are being developed for.