by the Novartis Foundation

The astounding diversity of the immune system and the complexity of its regulatory pathways makes immunology a combinatorial science. Computational analysis has therefore become an essential element of immunology research and this has led to the creation of the emerging field of immunoinformatics. Immunoinformatics is the first to feature thorough coverage of this new field.

Immunoinformatics encompasses key developments in immunoinformatics, including immunological databases, sequence analysis, structure modelling, mathematical modelling of the immune system, simulation of laboratory experiments, statistical support for immunological experimentation and immunogenomics.

The purpose of Immunoinformatics, therefore, is to present contributions from a multidisciplinary team of biologists and computer scientists to explore the issues related to better understanding of immune function and, in particular, to help apply new computer science methods to immunological research.

Contents

1. Chair's Introduction
2. Immunoinformatics - the new kid in town
3. The fututre for computational modelling and prediction systems in clinical immunology
4. Immunoinformatics in personalized medicine
5. From immunome to vaccine: epitope mapping and vaccine design tools
6. Insights from MHC-bound peptides
7. General discussion I
8. Computational vaccinology: quantitative approaches
9. IMGT, the international ImMunoGeneTics information System
10. Generating data for databases—the peptide repertoire of HLA molecules
11. HLA nomenclature and the IMGT/HLA Sequence Database
12. From immunogenetics to immunomics: functional prospecting of genes and transcripts
13. Mathematical models of HIV and the immune system
14. General discussion II
15. Immunogenomics: towards a digital immune system
16. Viral bioinformatics: computational views of host and pathogen
17. Final general discussion
18. Closing remarks

Index of Contributors
Subject Index

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