Genomic Vaccines for Pandemic Diseases in Times of COVID-19: Global Trends and Patent Landscape

This chapter provides an analysis of global trends in genomic vaccines, a radical innovation breakthrough (RIB), from technological foresight and pandemic preparedness perspectives, crucial in times of COVID-19. From this conceptual framework, the state-of-the-art and technological prospects for these genomic vaccines are examined, based on a search on scientific publications and on patents for the period 2010–2020, presenting the vaccine patent landscape for the period. This search provides an overview of recent breakthroughs in genomic vaccines and two other related RIBs, gene editing and gene therapy, and identifies novel strategies that could positively contribute to the development of future genomic vaccines to pandemic diseases and COVID-19. Our results evidence in the last decade extraordinary advances in genetic approaches, gene editing and gene therapy, and the rapid development of innovative DNA/RNA vaccines for the prevention and immunotherapy of an extensive diversity of diseases, from the neglected infectious ones to cancer therapy. These results highlight the flexibility of vaccine technological platforms, crucial for response to pandemics and COVID-19, including hepatitis B, varicella, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, autoimmune diseases – systemic lupus erythematosus, lupus nephritis, and autoimmune myasthenia gravis – and finally a new nucleic acid sequence for immunogenicity to SARS-CoV-2.