Dosing & Uses
COVID-19 Disease Prevention
Pending FDA approval for prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Several vaccines are in late phase 3 clinical trials in the United States
Pharmacology
Mechanism of Action
The goal is to elicit long-term antigen-specific antibody responses by plasma cells and to develop persistent T-cell and B-cell memory of the antigen (ie, humoral and cellular immune response)
Viral vector technology involves the delivery of ≥1 genes that encode a target antigen within an unrelated, engineered virus (eg, adenovirus, measles vaccine [MV])
These types of vaccines are likely to be developed more slowly than nucleic acid (genetic code) vaccines owing to the need for biosafety level 2 (BSL2) laboratories
The concern of possible preexisting immunity in vaccine recipients to viral vectors (eg Ad5, MV) decreasing vaccine effectiveness have been avoided by using low human prevalence adenoviral serotypes (Ad26, Ad35)
