Nanotechnology-Enhanced Vaccines for Respiratory Infections: Opportunities and Challenges

The continued global burden of the respiratory infections, despite availability of effective vaccines against major respiratory pathogens, represents the need to improve vaccination strategies. Although the conventional vaccines have shown effectiveness in many of the infectious diseases, they have serious limitations in developing the mucosal immunity and often fail to provide long-term protection against the rapidly mutating respiratory pathogens. In this area, nanotechnology offers novel solutions to enhance the potential of the respiratory vaccines. This review highlights recent advancements in the diverse nanotechnology platforms for respiratory vaccines, along with their transformative potentials, opportunities as well as challenges by covering the recent trends in the nanotechnology-based respiratory vaccines. Various nanotechnology platforms for respiratory vaccines include lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), polymeric nanoparticles, inorganic nanoparticles, biomimetic and self-assembling nanoplatforms. These platforms potentially address the key limitations of the traditional respiratory vaccines by improving the stability and targeted delivery of antigens, mucosal and cellular immune responses and flexible formulations against the evolving pathogens. However, challenges related to safety, scalability and real world applicability remain. The increasing research endeavors are gradually addressing the longstanding challenges and limitations of the nanotechnological measures in the respiratory vaccination and advancing this field with new opportunities for preventing the respiratory infections.