Bioinformatics for Vaccinology

Vaccines have probably saved more lives and reduced suffering in a greater number of people than any other medical intervention in human history, succeeding in eradicating smallpox and significantly reducing the mortality and incidence of other diseases. However, with the emergence of diseases such as SARS and the threat of biological warfare, vaccination has once again become a topic of major interest in public health.§§Vaccinology now has at its disposal an array of post-genomic approaches of great power. None has a more persuasive potential impact than the application of computational informatics to vaccine discovery; the recent expansion in genome data and the parallel increase in cheap computing power have placed the bioinformatics exploration of pathogen genomes centre stage for vaccine researchers.§§This a book to address the area of bioinformatics as applied to rational vaccine design, discussing the ways in which bioinformatics can contribute to improved vaccine development by§ introducing the subject of harnessing the mathematical and computing power inherent in bioinformatics to the study of vaccinology§ putting it into a historical and societal context, and§ exploring the scope of its methods and applications.§§Bioinformatics for Vaccinology is a one-stop introduction to computational vaccinology. It will be of particular interest to bioinformaticians with an interest in immunology, as well as to immunologists, and other biologists who need to understand how advances in theoretical and computational immunobiology can transform their working practices.