The future of mRNA vaccines beyond COVID-19

While a dramatic increase in MRNA research related to COVID-19 vaccines emerged, we see that other non-COVID-19 research and development technology now dominates preclinical and clinical trials, especially for infectious diseases and cancers

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Development and deployment of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 was a tremendous public health achievement in the face of a global health crisis. That success generated immense excitement around mRNA technology,significantly accelerating its development and application to a wide range of diseases.

About 70 per cent of active mRNA vaccine preclinical and clinical trials worldwide are now focused on diseases beyond COVID-19, comprising 31 per cent of mRNA vaccine trials on cancer and 69 per cent on other infectious, genetic, and immune diseases (see Figure 1). The surge of research into these vaccines since 2020 is surpassing COVID-19, proving they'll be a long-term avenue for research and development.

The state of mRNA vaccine research

Although it may appear that mRNA vaccines were invented recently, research into these types of vaccines has been ongoing for over 30 years. As indicated in the CAS Content Collection, the largest human-curated repository of scientific information, the output of journal publications in the mRNA vaccine field followed a slow upward trend from 1965 to 2019, with slight annual growth. The number of journal publications on mRNA vaccines was only 571 until 2019 (see Figure 2B).

Significant growth began in 2020, and by 2024, there were more than 8,000 journal relating to publications mRNA vaccines. Patents also reflect this trend, with mRNA vaccine patent publications increasing from around 30 in 2020 to several hundred in 2024 (see Figure 2C). The notable rise in preprint publications from 2020 to 2024 can be attributed to the urgent need to disseminate research findings on mRNA vaccines during the pandemic.