The existence of challenging diseases such as
cancers, HIV and Zika requires developing new
vaccines that can generate tunable and robust immune responses against the diseases.
Biomaterials-based techniques have been broadly explored for designing
vaccines that can produce controllable and potent immunity. Among the existing
biomaterials-based strategies, the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly technique is remarkably attractive in
vaccine design due to its unique features such as programmed and versatile cargo loading, cargo protection, co-delivery, juxtaposing of immune signals, etc. In this work, we reviewed the existing LbL-based
vaccine design techniques for translational applications. Specifically, we discussed
nanovaccines constructed by coating
polyelectrolyte multilayers (
PEMs) on nanoparticles,
microcapsule vaccines assembled from
PEMs, polyplex/complex
vaccines condensed from charged materials and microneedle
vaccines deposited with
PEMs, highlighting the employment of these techniques to promote immunity against diseases ranging from
cancers to infectious and
autoimmune diseases (i.e., HIV,
influenza,
multiple sclerosis, etc.). Additionally, the review specifically emphasized using LbL-based
vaccine technologies for tuning the cellular and molecular pathways, demonstrating the unique advantages presented by these vaccination strategies. These studies showed the versatility and potency of using LbL-based techniques for designing the next generation of
biomaterials vaccines for translational purposes.