Nanocarrier-based vaccine delivery systems for synthetic peptide vaccines

Abstract Vaccination is one of the most effective public health interventions for prevention and treatment of diseases. However, there are certain unfavorable characteristics associated with whole pathogen live attenuated/heat killed and protein subunit vaccines. Most notably, there exists numerous diseases for which these classical vaccination methods are either ineffective or unsafe, for example, cancer, human immunodeficiency virus, and group A streptococcus. As a result of this need for improved vaccine technologies, synthetic peptide vaccines were developed. These vaccines employ only the minimum antigenic component from the target organism. However, these small peptide epitopes lack immunogenicity due to their small size and lack of pathogen-associated molecular patterns. Nanocarrier-based delivery systems represent one of the most promising strategies for the development of successful peptide-based nanovaccines. Discussed here are some of the most common nanocarrier delivery systems employed to improve the immunogenicity of synthetic peptide vaccines.