Epitope vaccine is a novel strategy for vaccine development in recent years,exhibiting ad-vantages such as safety,and the ability to induce specific humoral and cellular immune responses a-gainst pathogens.Among them,the identification and delivery of epitopes are crucial in the design of multi-epitope vaccines.Compared to traditional methods of antigenic epitope identification,vari-ous new techniques such as bioinformatics,ELIspot,and intracellular cytokine staining have been developed.Since the direct immunization of multi-epitope peptides results in low protective effica-cy,efficient delivery systems are urgently needed.The antigenic epitopes commonly used delivery systems include viral vectors,and non-virus vectors such as nanoparticles,etc.Additionally,to en-hance the immunization efficacy of vaccines,antigenic epitopes are usually modified,including mul-tiple epitopes in tandem and epitope targeting modification and other strategies.This review sum-marizes the methods for accurate identification of antigenic epitopes with well immunogenicity as well as effective delivery strategies for antigenic epitopes,providing new insight into the develop-ment of novel multi-epitope vaccines.

Epitope vaccine is a novel strategy for vaccine development in recent years,exhibiting ad-vantages such as safety,and the ability to induce specific humoral and cellular immune responses a-gainst pathogens.Among them,the identification and delivery of epitopes are crucial in the design of multi-epitope vaccines.Compared to traditional methods of antigenic epitope identification,vari-ous new techniques such as bioinformatics,ELIspot,and intracellular cytokine staining have been developed.Since the direct immunization of multi-epitope peptides results in low protective effica-cy,efficient delivery systems are urgently needed.The antigenic epitopes commonly used delivery systems include viral vectors,and non-virus vectors such as nanoparticles,etc.Additionally,to en-hance the immunization efficacy of vaccines,antigenic epitopes are usually modified,including mul-tiple epitopes in tandem and epitope targeting modification and other strategies.This review sum-marizes the methods for accurate identification of antigenic epitopes with well immunogenicity as well as effective delivery strategies for antigenic epitopes,providing new insight into the develop-ment of novel multi-epitope vaccines.