SARS-CoV-2 virus antigens and vaccines targeting COVID19

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that caused the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID19) pandemic, has imposed a serious public health threat, which requires effective treatments and vaccination strategies for disease control and prevention. In the vaccine development process, identifying the structure and role of viral antigens is unavoidable. Various vaccines using a range of design techniques, including inactivated virus-based vaccines, viral vectors, DNA vaccines, and protein recombinants are being developed, evaluated, and used to prevent the spread of disease. This review article was described SARS-CoV-2 antigens for vaccine development as well as recent advances in COVID19 vaccines. In this study, the websites of PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science were searched and related articles up to 2021 were extracted. The results of these studies showed that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines had a significant effect in reducing the COVID19-related morbidity and mortality regardless of vaccine type. However, new variants harboring mutations in the spike protein enhanced the virus spreading and virus binding affinity to its receptor ACE2 and reduced the effectiveness of vaccines.