Novel immunological tools for efficient diagnosis and treatment of emerging infections are urgently required. Advances in the diagnostic and vaccine development fields are continuously progressing, with reverse vaccinology and structural vaccinology (SV) methods for antigen identification and structure-based antigen (re)design playing increasingly relevant roles. SV, in particular, is predicted to be the front-runner in the future development of diagnostics and vaccines targeting challenging diseases such as AIDS and cancer. We review state-of-the-art methodologies for structure-based epitope identification and antigen design, with specific applicative examples. We highlight the implications of such methods for the engineering of biomolecules with improved immunological properties, potential diagnostic and/or therapeutic uses, and discuss the perspectives of structure-based rational design for the production of advanced immunoreagents.

迫切需要用于有效诊断和治疗新发感染的新型免疫学工具。诊断和疫苗开发领域的进步正在不断发展，用于抗原鉴定和基于结构的抗原（重新）设计的反向疫苗学和结构疫苗学（SV）方法发挥着越来越重要的作用。尤其是，预计SV将成为针对具有挑战性的疾病（如AIDS和癌症）的诊断和疫苗未来发展的领先者。我们回顾了基于结构的表位鉴定和抗原设计的最新方法，并附有具体的应用实例。我们着重介绍了此类方法对具有改进的免疫学特性，潜在的诊断和/或治疗用途的生物分子工程的意义，