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Updated: Jul 7, 2025

Identification of Circular RNAs using RNA Sequencing
Published on: November 14, 2019
Circular RNA: A promising new star of vaccine
Jindong Xie1, Fengxi Ye2, Xinpei Deng1
1State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Guangdong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou 510060, Guangdong Province, China.
Abstract:
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of single-stranded RNAs with covalently closed structures. Owing to their not having 3' or 5' ends, circRNAs are highly durable and insusceptible to exonuclease-mediated degradation. Moreover, some circRNAs with certain structures are translatable, making them novel vaccines. Vaccines are efficient tools for immunotherapy, such as for the prevention of infectious diseases and cancer treatment. The immune system is activated during immunotherapy to fight against abnormal allies or invaders. CircRNA vaccines represent a potential new avenue in the vaccine era. Recently, several circRNA vaccines have been synthesized and tested in vitro and in vivo. Our review briefly introduces the current understanding of the biology and function of translatable circRNAs, molecular biology, synthetic methods, delivery of circRNA, and current circRNA vaccines. We also discussed the challenges and future directions in the field by summarizing the developments in circRNA vaccines in the past few years.
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