Securing and developing the IPD-MHC database to enhance research into livestock diseases

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The Immuno Polymorphism Database (IPD) (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ipd/) is a set of specialist databases that contain curated sequence datasets of polymorphic immune genes. Developed and maintained by the Anthony Nolan, these databases help save the lives of people with blood cancer by matching donors major histocompatibility complex (MHC; (also known as HLA in humans) to prevent rejection. One of these databases is IPD-MHC, a repository of non-human MHC genes that includes the major farmed animals species; cattle, sheep, pigs, trout and salmon. All these species exhibit high degrees of variation within their MHC genes. This diversity differentially influences how the adaptive and innate immune systems respond to pathogens and vaccines. Therefore a greater understanding of this diversity and the tools to analyse it offer a significant advance to our broad capability to examine immune function in these fundamental food producing species.Since the first release in 2003, IPD-MHC has become the central source of curated and annotated comparative MHC data and nomenclature globally. The website now receives nearly 250 visitors every day and over 500 sequences were submitted in 2013 from all over the world. However, this success has created problems. The database and website have never been specifically funded. IPD-MHC has existed as an 'in kind' project that the research community and bioinformaticians at Antony Nolan have considered important enough to create and continue. The demands that the level of traffic has created mean that this model is no longer sustainable. Indeed, there is already a chronic lack of development and this data repository is in danger of becoming redundant. This proposal will support a dedicated IPD-MHC bioinformatician located at Anthony Nolan to work alongside the other IPD bioinformaticians. Their role will be to unify the individual species websites, incorporate the extensive chicken MHC data as a key farmed animal and create one streamlined data submission processes. Once this is in place, the capability of IPD-MHC will be significantly enhanced to accept a greater range of data and an expanded suite of analysis tools will be imbedded to allow advanced analysis for non-bioinformaticians. IPD-MHC still has overwhelming support from the research community, Anthony Nolan and the offer of free infrastructure from the European Bioinformatics Institute. This project is aimed at securing this central resource and expertise in the UK, to benefit this important UK research community and reach out to the rest of the world as part of the global food security agenda.