Epitopes in ChEBI – A Collaboration with the IEDB

Abstract

*ChEBI background:* Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) is a curated database of small chemical entities important in biosystems. As well as a description of entities, it provides a semantically rich knowledge base; and an internal hierarchy that organises the entities by their molecular structure types and potential rôles.*The ChEBI-IEDB collaboration:* The Immune Epitope and Analysis Resource (IEDB) is a project supported by contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Its goal is to make epitope-related data on infectious diseases and immune disorders freely available to researchers worldwide. In June 2009, ChEBI began working with the IEDB on a project aimed at incorporating into ChEBI, by manual curation, a pilot subset of immunologically important chemicals identified as immune epitopes.*The significance of the project:* Numerous reports attest to an increasing global prevalence of immune-related diseases, with a multiplicity of contributing factors. This situation underscores the need for cross-talk among the various scientific disciplines, and makes ChEBI involvement in this project particularly relevant.*Collaboration outcome:* That collaboration among curators working on different databases can be reciprocally beneficial has been amply demonstrated by the ChEBI-IEDB teamwork described: while the incorporated IEDB items have substantially enriched ChEBI, the latter’s multiplicity of synonyms, structure tree lay-out and expertise in describing non-peptidic epitopes have been equally useful to the IEDB in facilitating the search process.*Status quo and plans:* We continue to refine our task of assisting the identification, understanding and utilisation of biologically meaningful chemical entities by engaging in further joint projects.