Databases and in silico tools for vaccine design

Abstract

In vaccine design, databases and in silico tools play different but complementary roles. Databases collect experimentally verified vaccines and vaccine components, and in silico tools provide computational methods to predict and design new vaccines and vaccine components. Vaccine-related databases include databases of vaccines and vaccine components. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a database of licensed human vaccines, and the US Department of Agriculture keeps a database of licensed animal vaccines. Databases of vaccine clinical trials and vaccines in research also exist. The important vaccine components include vaccine antigens, vaccine adjuvants, vaccine vectors, and -vaccine preservatives. The vaccine antigens can be whole proteins or immune epitopes. Various in silico vaccine design tools are also available. The Vaccine Investigation and Online Information Network (VIOLIN; http://www.violinet.org ) is a comprehensive vaccine database and analysis system. The VIOLIN database includes various types of vaccines and vaccine components. VIOLIN also includes Vaxign, a Web-based in silico vaccine design program based on the reverse vaccinology strategy. Vaccine information and resources can be integrated with Vaccine Ontology (VO). This chapter introduces databases and in silico tools that facilitate vaccine design, especially those in the VIOLIN system.