Abstract
Identification of B-cell epitopes in target antigens is one of the most crucial steps for epitopebased
vaccine development, immunodiagnostic tests, antibody production, and disease diagnosis and
therapy. Experimental methods for B-cell epitope mapping are time consuming, costly and labor intensive;
in the meantime, various in-silico methods are proposed to predict both linear and conformational
B-cell epitopes. The accurate identification of B-cell epitopes presents major challenges for immunoinformaticians.
In this paper, we have comprehensively reviewed in-silico methods for B-cell epitope identification.
The aim of this review is to stimulate the development of better tools which could improve the
identification of B-cell epitopes, and further for the development of therapeutic antibodies and diagnostic
tools.
Keywords:
Epitope prediction, Linear epitope, Conformational epitope, BCR, B-cell, Epitope.
Graphical Abstract
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