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The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered a new era in vaccine development. Traditional vaccines based on peptide, protein, and viral vectors have given way to new technologies utilizing DNA and mRNA as antigens to build a protective immune response. Biotech companies such as Moderna and BioNTech have pioneered the use of mRNA as vaccine against COVID-19 demonstrating not only proof-of-concept but also effective viral prevention in large-scale Phase 3 clinical trials. Derived from an alphavirus genome, self-amplifying mRNA (SAM) encodes the alphaviral replicase and a gene of interest (GOI) which enables replication of RNA upon delivery into the cytoplasm. This unique feature of self-amplification distinguishes from the mRNA counterparts. Abnova has developed a COVID-19 SAM RBD (receptor-binding domain) formulated in lipid nanoparticle (LNP) which generates higher antibody titer response than mRNA, setting the precedence for the next-generation vaccines.
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