Nanomaterial-Based Vaccines

Vaccination is a process of delivery of a nontoxic antigenic material into the body to activate immune response and is considered to be the most cost-effective and quick way to combat infectious diseases. Nanomaterial-based vaccinations are promising as compared to conventional vaccines and it is due to the breakthrough in biological engineering which allows exact understanding of nanoparticle size, shape, and functionality that results in improved immunogenicity. Various nanoscale platforms like liposomes, virus-like particles, polymeric nanoparticles, and many others have great importance in vaccine market. Recently during pandemic, we have seen how mRNA nanoparticle-based vaccines were developed and manufactured much more quickly than traditional vaccines like COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and they were proven to be very effective and helpful. They are a type of vaccine that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to instruct cells in the body to produce a protein that is unique to SARS-CoV-2; the virus that causes COVID-19. This chapter summarizes different types of nanoparticles useful for delivering vaccines, their mechanisms, and cytotoxicity/risk factors of nanoparticles.