Abstract: As important components of vaccines against diseases, adjuvants can enhance the human body's specific immune response to antigens and significantly increase the strength, breadth and durability of the immune response, thus playing an important role in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases and tumors. With the development of immunology and pharmacology, traditional adjuvants have been exposed to such problems as biotoxicity, high systemic exposure and unknown mechanism of immunostimulatory activity. Thus, the development of immune adjuvant delivery system has become a research hotspot in biologic immunotherapy. Herein, we summarize the composition and immune activation mechanism of approved adjuvants, analyse and discuss the advantages of vaccine delivery systems with adjuvant effects, and focus on the progress of novel adjuvant platforms based on liposomes, virus-like particles, organic synthetic materials, natural biomaterials and inorganic nanomaterials, in order to provide some reference for the development of safe and effective novel vaccine adjuvant materials and adjuvant platforms.