Los Alamos Hepatitis C Immunology Database

Appl Bioinformatics 2005; 4 (4): 217-225 1175-5636/05/0004-0217/$34.95/0

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Los Alamos Hepatitis C Immunology Database Karina Yusim, Russell Richardson, Ning Tao, Anita Dalwani, Ashish Agrawal, James Szinger, Robert Funkhouser, Bette Korber and Carla Kuiken Theoretical Biology and Biophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA

Abstract

The Los Alamos Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Sequence Database (http://hcv.lanl.gov or http://hcv-db.org) was officially launched in September 2003. The sister HCV Immunology Database was made public in September 2004. The HCV Immunology Database is based on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Immunology Database. The HCV Immunology Database contains a curated inventory of immunological epitopes in HCV and their interaction with the immune system, with associated retrieval and analysis tools. This article describes in detail the types of data and services that the new database offers, the tools provided and the database framework. The data and some of the HCV database tools are available for download for non-commercial use.

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) has infected 4 million people in the US and about 170 million people worldwide.[1] Around 75% of cases result in latent infection,[2,3] which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer, and HCV is the leading cause of liver transplantation in the US.[1] HCV-associated mortality is around one in eight, and around one in four will develop cirrhosis of the liver.[4] With 170 million people infected worldwide, this means 20 million HCV-related deaths in the next few decades. There are several technical problems hampering HCV research. Both HCV drug development and vaccine studies are difficult and expensive because of the lack of good animal models (other than ethically problematic and very expensive chimpanzees), and the difficulty of culturing the virus in vitro.[5,6] The only effective treatment against HCV presently is a long (6–12 months), expensive and highly toxic regimen of interferon and ribavirin, which is effective in 40–80% of cases. The effectiveness of this regimen depends on the HCV genotype. For unknown reasons, the efficacy against genotype 1, most prevalent in the US, is