Italian 
English RASSEGNE - Reviews
Volume:
Biochimica Clinica 2022; 46(1) 016-033
Pubblicato on-line:
Ottobre 7, 2021
DOI:
10.19186/BC_2021.065
SARS-CoV-2 e la nuova era dei vaccini – Parte II: I vaccini oggi in uso per contrastare la pandemia da COVID-19 e il ruolo del laboratorio nella campagna vaccinale
SARS-CoV-2 and the new era of vaccines – Part II Currently available vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the laboratory role in the vaccination campaign
AUTORI
1Laboratorio di Biochimica Clinica, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria “Maggiore della Carità” di Novara
2Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”, Dipartimento di Scienze della Salute, Novara
ABSTRACT
SARS-CoV-2 and the new era of vaccines – Part II Currently available vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the laboratory role in the vaccination campaign
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted an unprecedented race to find the means to contrast the SARS-CoV-2 infection, resulting in a huge common effort to develop an efficacious vaccine as soon as possible and an exceptional acceleration of the review process to ensure its safety and efficacy. Many technological platforms are currently under investigation or have already been approved, including those based on the inactivated virus, mRNA- or DNA-based vaccines expressing viral antigens, recombinant SARS-CoV-2 proteins and vector-based vaccines exploiting chimeric adenoviruses. The emergence of new viral variants has represented ad additional challenge and has induced the entire scientific community to potentiate the monitoring process of the ongoing vaccination campaigns. In this scenario, laboratory medicine certainly plays a pivotal role not only in the diagnosis of the infection but also in monitoring the immune response to vaccines and in the detection and prevention of clinically significant adverse events, ultimately contributing to the determination of the biological and clinical efficacy of the available vaccines. This review offers an overview of the most recent and updated data on anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and the technological principles behind them as well as on the resources that laboratory medicine can offer to support the vaccination campaigns. All these aspects represent a rapid step forward in the clinical field which transcends the COVID-19 outbreak and that will certainly pave the way for the future scientific research.