**About the Editors**

**Maria G. Isaguliants** Ph.D., Associated Prof. I started my research career as a bioorganic chemist, and throughout the years developed a profile of immunology and vaccinology research. My main research interests lie in: (i) The design of DNA vaccines using consensus, chimeric genes, protein domain reshuffling, site mutagenesis against chronic viral infections and cancer, and the development of immunization techniques providing predetermined specificity and polarity of the immune response; (ii) Molecular factors of viral pathogenicity and carcinogenicity, oxidative stress, and oxidative stress response and its regulation in viral infections and cancer. Since 2000, I have been working at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, developing experimental DNA vaccines against HIV and hepatitis C virus. In 2014, I started at the Riga Stradins University, and from 2016 was the coordinator of the Twinning project "DNA vaccines against cancer". The latter shifted my research interests towards the development of vaccines against cancer associated with chronic viral infections. In 2019, my group received a grant from the Latvian Research Council on the immunotherapy of hepatitis C-related liver cancer. In the frame of this project, we developed a novel cancer vaccine candidate based on telomerase reverse transcriptase. I have a research affiliation in Russia at the Gamaleya Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology. In Russia, my group has pioneered the field of DNA immunization (first paper published 1999). The focus of our latest studies lies in the development of a therapeutic DNA vaccine against cancer associated with infection with human papilloma viruses for HIV-infected individuals. Our results have featured in 86 publications in peer-reviewed international and national journals. I have a passion for vaccine-related research and work hard towards the coordination of efforts of vaccinologists around the world to promote multiple perspectives of vaccine technologies. To this end, from 2002 to 2013, I served as the coordinator of the Baltic partnership "Baltic Network against life-threatening viral infections", uniting 12 institutes from Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Finland, and Russia; and in 2017–2018, the initiation project on innovative strategies of vaccination and immunotherapy for five Baltic countries. I am an active member of the International Society for Vaccines, acting as a Board member in 2018–2019, an editor of our professional journal Vaccines (MDPI), and (co)organizer of the yearly conferences on perspective technologies of vaccination and immunotherapy 2016–2020, the latest being held on Zoom on October 27–29, 2020 (www.techvac.org).

**Karl Ljungberg**, Ph.D. I am a passionate advocate for vaccines as a means of improving public health and have designated my career to vaccine research and development. I have spent the past 20 years at academic and public health institutions in Sweden and the US to study and develop vaccines, adjuvants, and antivirals against diseases caused by Chikungunya virus, influenza, HIV, and SARS, as well as immunotherapeutic vaccination against cancer. The focus of these studies has been on antigen and vector design, delivery, and immunogenicity of gene-based and viral-vectored vaccines. I have worked with several vaccine candidates that are in or are on their way into clinical trials. Currently, I am Director of Preclinical Development at Eurocine Vaccines AB. Eurocine Vaccines is a vaccine company based at Karolinska Institutet campus, Stockholm, Sweden. Eurocine Vaccines acts through partnering with vaccine companies, academic groups, and non-profit organizations during the late-stage discovery phase and facilitating development, manufacturing, and proof-of-concept in humans. We have experience from vaccine development up to and including conducting clinical trials up to phase II.
