Therapeutic Vaccines and Nucleic Acid Drugs for Cardiovascular Disease

To combat the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), novel vaccine modalities, such as messenger RNA vaccines, were rapidly developed and have shown high efficacy. This new vaccine technology, underpinned by intensive immunological analysis, is now being applied to the production of other vaccines. For over 10 years, we have been developing therapeutic vaccines for non-infectious diseases. The epitope vaccine approach, which combines a B-cell epitope with exogenous T-cell epitopes presented through major histocompatibility complex molecules, has been proposed to induce antibody production. This vaccine type is designed to efficiently induce a blocking antibody response against the self-antigen without activating cytotoxic T cells. If therapeutic vaccines become established as treatment options for conditions such as hypertension or dyslipidemia, their administration-potentially only a few times per year-could replace the need for daily medication. Nucleic acid drugs, including small interfering RNA and antisense oligonucleotides, have recently received attention as long-term agonists, similar to vaccines. Therefore, therapeutic vaccines or nucleic acid drugs could represent a novel strategy for controlling the progression of cardiovascular diseases. It is hoped that the accumulation of immunological findings and advances in vaccine technology will provide valuable insights into the development of vaccines for treating cardiovascular diseases.