Pulmonary vaccine delivery: An emerging strategy for vaccination and immunotherapy

Vaccination has been known as the most successful health strategy for the prevention of infectious diseases, and their subsequent disability conditions. Conventional vaccination is based on parenteral administration and therefore requires needles, cold-chain storage and distribution. To meet these drawbacks, new strategies such as pulmonary vaccination have brought new insights into immunotherapy and vaccination. Among novel strategies, nanoparticulate vaccine delivery systems play an undeniable role in targeting and depositing of antigenic (nano-)microparticles in particular regions of the respiratory tract, engineering the inhalable powders, altering the release profile and pharmacokinetic features of vaccines. This study aims to review pulmonary immune system, pulmonary vaccine delivery, micro and nanocarriers for pulmonary vaccine delivery, and nanotechnology-based pulmonary vaccines.