There is currently a respiratory disease outbreak caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). After rapid development, RNA vaccines and adenoviral vector vaccines were approved within a year, which has demonstrated the strong impact of preventing infectious diseases using gene therapy technology. Furthermore, intensive immunological analysis has been performed to evaluate the efficiency and safety of these vaccines, potentially allowing for rapid progress in vaccine technology. After the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era, the novel vaccine technology developed will expand to other vaccines. We have been developing vaccines for chronic diseases, such as hypertension, for >10 years. Regarding the development of vaccines against self-antigens (i.e., angiotensin II), the vaccine should efficiently induce a blocking antibody response against the self-antigen without activating cytotoxic T cells. Therefore, the epitope vaccine approach has been proposed to induce antibody production in response to a combination of a B cell epitope and exogenous T cell epitopes through major histocompatibility complex molecules. When these vaccines are established as therapeutic options for hypertension, their administration regimen, which might be a few times per year, will replace daily medication use. Thus, therapeutic vaccines for hypertension may be a novel option to control the progression of cerebrovascular diseases. Hopefully, the accumulation of immunological findings and vaccine technology advances due to COVID-19 will provide a novel concept for vaccines for chronic diseases.

目前有一场由严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒 2 (SARS-CoV-2) 引起的呼吸道疾病暴发。经过快速发展，RNA疫苗和腺病毒载体疫苗在一年内获批，显示了利用基因治疗技术预防传染病的强大影响。此外，已经进行了深入的免疫学分析来评估这些疫苗的效率和安全性，这可能会促进疫苗技术的快速进步。在 2019 年冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 时代之后，开发的新型疫苗技术将扩展到其他疫苗。10 多年来，我们一直在开发针对慢性病（如高血压）的疫苗。关于针对自身抗原（即血管紧张素 II）的疫苗的开发，疫苗应有效诱导针对自身抗原的阻断抗体反应，而不激活细胞毒性 T 细胞。因此，已提出表位疫苗方法通过主要组织相容性复合物分子诱导抗体产生以响应 B 细胞表位和外源性 T 细胞表位的组合。当这些疫苗被确定为高血压的治疗选择时，它们的给药方案（可能每年几次）将取代日常药物使用。因此，治疗高血压的疫苗可能是控制脑血管疾病进展的新选择。希望 COVID-19 带来的免疫学发现和疫苗技术进步的积累将为慢性病疫苗提供一个新的概念。