iVax- A Vaccine and Diagnostic Design Toolkit
The iVAX Toolkit is under development for use with vaccine research and development programs based at the U19-funded TRIAD program (University of Rhode Island, Institute for Immunology and Informatics). The vaccine design tools contained in the iVAX website are already available to URI and Lifespan collaborators researching vaccine design for hepatitis C virus, tick-borne diseases, H.pylori infection and biodefense.
With funding from the NIH, the iVAX vaccine design toolkit being expanded to include tailor-designed for each of the CCHI investigators. Depending on NIH funding for continued expansion of the program, eventually each Center [see list of CCHI Centers here] will have a specially designed, dedicated website (one per CCHI investigator) and the investigators at the site will be trained to use the tools for their research. While the sites are being developed, the iVAX Toolkit team at TRIAD is providing real-time consultations on CCHI projects. A report of the work accomplished during the first six months is available here.
What is iVAX? The team at EpiVax, Inc., led by Dr. Annie De Groot and Bill Martin, has pioneered the development of a set of immunoinformatics tools which allow researchers to predict the immunogenicity of peptides and proteins and design vaccines based on genomic information. More information about the tools can be obtained here. The potential applications of the iVAX tools are protean. Just for instance, vaccines could be designed directly from genomic information. Alternatively, one could use the tools to predict which vaccines will be most effective or might even have the possibility of eliciting an adverse immune response.
The iVax website will have sub-sites for each of the U19 CCHI collaborators where their specific research immunoinformatics projects can be carried out. In the future, we anticipate that iVax will be further expanded so that collaborators working in the area of neglected tropical diseases will also have access to the site and its immunoinformatics tools.. The opportunities for expansion are endless. For more information about the iVAX Toolkit, please contact Dr. Denice Spero or Dr. Annie De Groot.
