Computational vaccinology and the ICoVax 2012 workshop

Area of Science:

• Computational vaccinology, also known as vaccine informatics, is an interdisciplinary field.
• It integrates computational and informatics methods to address scientific and clinical questions in vaccinology.

Background:

• The field intersects with immunoinformatics, reverse vaccinology, postlicensure vaccine research, vaccinomics, literature mining, and systems vaccinology.
• The second ISV Pre-conference Computational Vaccinology Workshop (ICoVax 2012) highlighted key topics in the field.

Discussion:

• Workshop topics included allergen predictions, epitope mapping (linear T cell and functional conformational), and protein-ligand binding site prediction.
• Vaccine design strategies using reverse vaccinology and computational vaccinology case studies were also presented.

Key Insights:

• Significant progress has been achieved in computational vaccinology.
• However, numerous challenges remain within the field, requiring further investigation and development.

Outlook:

• This editorial outlines major challenges for the future of computational vaccinology.
• It also identifies emerging themes poised to drive the field's expansion and evolution in the coming years.