The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB)

The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) catalogs experimentally characterized B cell and T cell epitopes, MHC binding data, and MHC ligand elution experiments to document molecular structures recognized by adaptive immune receptors.

Key Features:

• Epitope cataloging: Records experimentally validated B cell and T cell epitope sequences and associated metadata.
• MHC binding and ligand elution data: Includes Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) binding assay results and MHC ligand elution experiments.
• Molecular recognition details: Documents molecular structures recognized by adaptive immune receptors and the experimental context of epitope identification.
• Species coverage: Contains data from humans, nonhuman primates, rodents, pigs, cats, and other tested species.
• Positive and negative outcomes: Stores both positive and negative experimental results for comprehensive interpretation.
• Literature curation scale: Incorporates 180,978 experiments manually extracted from literature, reported to cover ~99% of publicly available peptide epitopes in infectious agents (excluding HIV) and ~93% of those in allergens.
• Investigator submissions: Incorporates 129,186 experiments submitted directly by investigators.
• Queryable attributes: Supports queries by epitope structure, source organism, MHC restriction, assay type, and host organism.
• Autoimmunity curation: Contains a program of epitope curation for autoimmunity with completion reported as expected by end of 2010.

Scientific Applications:

• Infectious disease epitope mapping: Supports mapping and analysis of peptide epitopes in infectious agents with reported near-complete public coverage (excluding HIV).
• Allergen epitope analysis: Enables analysis of epitopes mapped in allergens with reported ~93% public coverage.
• Autoimmunity studies: Provides curated epitope data relevant to autoimmune targets with a stated curation completion timeline.
• MHC and antigen presentation research: Facilitates analysis of MHC restriction and MHC ligand elution experimental results.
• Comparative immunology: Enables cross-species comparisons of epitope recognition across humans and multiple animal models.

Methodology:

Manual extraction and curation of experimental data from the literature combined with incorporation of investigator-submitted experimental datasets and restructuring of the database to support queries by epitope structure, source organism, MHC restriction, assay type, and host organism.