Uskoković Vuk
Advanced Materials & Nanobiotechnology Laboratory, TardigradeNano LLC, Irvine, CA 92604, USA.
Nanomedicine (Lond). 2021 Jun;16(14):1203-1218. doi: 10.2217/nnm-2021-0024. Epub 2021 May 14.
The most effective COVID-19 vaccines, to date, utilize nanotechnology to deliver immunostimulatory mRNA. However, their high cost equates to low affordability. Total nano-vaccine purchases per capita and their proportion within the total vaccine lots have increased directly with the GDP per capita of countries. While three out of four COVID-19 vaccines procured by wealthy countries by the end of 2020 were nano-vaccines, this amounted to only one in ten for middle-income countries and nil for the low-income countries. Meanwhile, economic gains of saving lives with nano-vaccines in USA translate to large costs in middle-/low-income countries. It is discussed how nanomedicine can contribute to shrinking this gap between rich and poor instead of becoming an exquisite technology for the privileged. Two basic routes are outlined: (1) the use of qualitative contextual analyses to endorse R&D that positively affects the sociocultural climate; (2) challenging the commercial, competitive realities wherein scientific innovation of the day operates.
迄今为止，最有效的新冠疫苗利用纳米技术来递送免疫刺激性信使核糖核酸（mRNA）。然而，其高昂的成本意味着可负担性较低。人均纳米疫苗采购总量及其在疫苗总批次中的占比与各国人均国内生产总值（GDP）直接相关。到2020年底，富裕国家采购的新冠疫苗中有四分之三是纳米疫苗，而在中等收入国家这一比例仅为十分之一，低收入国家则为零。与此同时，在美国使用纳米疫苗拯救生命所带来的经济收益，在中低收入国家却转化为巨大成本。文中讨论了纳米医学如何能够有助于缩小贫富差距，而非成为特权阶层的精致技术。概述了两条基本途径：（1）运用定性情境分析来支持对社会文化氛围有积极影响的研发；（2）挑战当今科学创新所处的商业竞争现实。
