title: Emerging vaccine informatics.
abstract: Vaccine informatics is an emerging research area that focuses on development and applications of bioinformatics methods that can be used to facilitate every aspect of the preclinical, clinical, and postlicensure vaccine enterprises. Many immunoinformatics algorithms and resources have been developed to predict T- and B-cell immune epitopes for epitope vaccine development and protective immunity analysis. Vaccine protein candidates are predictable in silico from genome sequences using reverse vaccinology. Systematic transcriptomics and proteomics gene expression analyses facilitate rational vaccine design and identification of gene responses that are correlates of protection in vivo. Mathematical simulations have been used to model host-pathogen interactions and improve vaccine production and vaccination protocols. Computational methods have also been used for development of immunization registries or immunization information systems, assessment of vaccine safety and efficacy, and immunization modeling. Computational literature mining and databases effectively process, mine, and store large amounts of vaccine literature and data. Vaccine Ontology (VO) has been initiated to integrate various vaccine data and support automated reasoning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine, Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, 48109, USA. yongqunh@med.umich.edu
authors.forename: Yongqun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Rino
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rappuoli
authors.forename: Anne S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: De Groot
authors.forename: Robert T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000906:Antibodies / Q000276:immunology; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D015195:Drug Design; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte / Q000276:immunology*; D018984:Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte / Q000276:immunology*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015894:Genome, Human; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D020543:Proteome / Q000378:metabolism; D014612:Vaccines / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000906:Antibodies; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte; D018984:Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte; D020543:Proteome; D014612:Vaccines