A benchmark dataset of protein antigens for antigenicity measurement

Antigenicity measurement plays a fundamental role in vaccine design, which requires antigen selection from a large number of mutants. To augment traditional cross-reactivity experiments, computational approaches for predicting the antigenic distance between multiple protein antigens are highly valuable. The performance of in silico models relies heavily on large-scale benchmark datasets, which are scattered among public databases and published articles or reports. Here, we present the first benchmark dataset of protein antigens with experimental evidence to guide in silico antigenicity calculations. This dataset includes (1) standard haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) tests for 3,867 influenza A/H3N2 strain pairs, (2) standard HI tests for 559 influenza virus B strain pairs, and (3) neutralization titres derived from 1,073 Dengue virus strain pairs. All of these datasets were collated and annotated with experimentally validated antigenicity relationships as well as sequence information for the corresponding protein antigens. We anticipate that this work will provide a benchmark dataset for in silico antigenicity prediction that could be further used to assist in epidemic surveillance and therapeutic vaccine design for viruses with variable antigenicity.