Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource

The rapid growth in the quantity of biomedical data available in publications presents researchers with a formidable challenge to keep up with the latest experimental results, survey relevant literature, and extract- specific informationfor their own research. For the study of epitopes, this challenge is addressed by the Immune Epitope Databaseand Analysis Resource(IEDB). This bioinformatics resource is freely available to assist in the development of new vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. It contains information on antibody and T cell epitopespertaining to infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, allergies, and transplants, for a variety of host species, including humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents. The IEDB also contains tools for predicting and analyzing epitopes. This article describes the scientific curation process employed to populate the database and how the data are structured within the database. The different means for accessing or querying the data are discussed. Finally, the capabilities within the Analysis Resource for predicting and analyzing epitopesare presented.