SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerged in late 2019, and was declared a global pandemic on March 11th 2020. With over 50 million cases and 1.2 million deaths around the world, to date, this pandemic represents the gravest global health crisis of our times. Thus, the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is an urgent global imperative. At the time of writing, there are over 165 vaccine candidates being developed, with 33 in various stages of clinical testing. In this review, we discuss emerging insights about the human immune response to SARS-CoV-2, and their implications for vaccine design. We then review emerging knowledge of the immunogenicity of the numerous vaccine candidates that are currently being tested in the clinic and discuss the range of immune defense mechanisms that can be harnessed to develop novel vaccines that confer durable protection against SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the potential role of a systems vaccinology approach in accelerating the clinical testing of vaccines, to meet the urgent needs posed by the pandemic.

导致COVID-19的病毒SARS-CoV-2于2019年末出现，并于2020年3月11日被宣布为全球性大流行。迄今为止，这种大流行代表着全球超过5000万例病例和120万例死亡。我们时代最严重的全球卫生危机。因此，开发COVID-19疫苗的竞赛是全球迫切需要解决的问题。在撰写本文时，有超过165种候选疫苗正在开发中，其中33种处于临床测试的各个阶段。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了有关人类对SARS-CoV-2的免疫反应及其对疫苗设计的影响的新兴见解。然后，我们回顾了有关目前正在临床中测试的多种候选疫苗的免疫原性的新兴知识，并讨论了可用于开发赋予针对SARS-CoV-2的持久保护作用的新型疫苗的免疫防御机制的范围。最后，我们以系统疫苗学方法在加速疫苗临床测试以满足潜在的大流行迫切需要方面的潜在作用进行了讨论。