title: Navigating diabetes-related immune epitope data: resources and tools provided by the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), originally focused on infectious diseases, was recently expanded to allergy, transplantation and autoimmunity diseases. Here we focus on diabetes, chosen as a prototype autoimmune disease. We utilize a combined tutorial and meta-analysis format, which demonstrates how common questions, related to diabetes epitopes can be answered.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 409 references are captured in the IEDB describing >2,500 epitopes from diabetes associated antigens. The vast majority of data were derived from GAD, insulin, IA-2/PTPRN, IGRP, ZnT8, HSP, and ICA-1, and the experiments related to T cell epitopes and MHC binding far outnumbers B cell assays. We illustrate how to search by specific antigens, epitopes or host. Other examples include searching for tetramers or epitopes restricted by specific alleles or assays of interest, or searching based on the clinical status of the host.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The inventory of all published diabetes epitope data facilitates its access for the scientific community. While the global collection of primary data from the literature reflects potential investigational biases present in the literature, the flexible search approach allows users to perform queries tailored to their preferences, including or excluding data as appropriate. Moreover, the analysis highlights knowledge gaps and identifies areas for future investigation.
authors.affiliation: Vaccine Discovery, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, CA.
authors.forename: Kerrie
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Vaughan
authors.affiliation: Vaccine Discovery, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, CA.
authors.forename: Bjoern
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.affiliation: INSERM, U1016, Cochin Institute, DeAR Lab Avenir, Saint Vincent de Paul Hospital, 82 Avenue Denfert Rochereau, 75674 Paris Cedex 14, France.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mallone
authors.affiliation: Developmental Immunology, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, CA.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: von Herrath
authors.affiliation: Department for Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bart O
authors.initials: BO
authors.lastname: Roep
authors.affiliation: Vaccine Discovery, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, CA.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sette