Updates on Databases of Allergens and Allergen-Epitopes

The increasing prevalence of allergic diseases is of great public health concern. Environmental and food allergens are the major triggers of allergic diseases via respiratory or gastrointestinal routes, respectively. A major setback in the clinical management of allergies is the unavailability of purified allergens required for diagnostic purposes. Furthermore, manipulation of allergen sequences and structures by employing protein-engineering approaches is needed to design immunotherapeutic vaccines. All these approaches rely upon the sequence, structure, and epitope location of allergens. A number of databases have therefore been developed that serve as repositories of molecular information of allergens. In this chapter, we discuss the five most important widely used allergen databases that might be helpful for the research community working on molecular allergology.