Accessibility Statement Skip Navigation
  • Why PRWeb
  • How It Works
  • Who Uses It
  • Pricing
  • Login
  • GDPR
  • Create a Free Account
Return to PRWeb homepage
  • News
  • Resources
  • Contact
When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type.

Searching for your content...

No results found. Please change your search terms and try again.
  • News in Focus
      • Browse News Releases

      • All News Releases
      • Multimedia Gallery

      • All Multimedia
      • All Photos
      • All Videos
  • Business & Money
      • Auto & Transportation

      • Aerospace, Defense
      • Air Freight
      • Airlines & Aviation
      • Automotive
      • Maritime & Shipbuilding
      • Railroads and Intermodal Transportation
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Transportation, Trucking & Railroad
      • Travel
      • Trucking and Road Transportation
      • View All Auto & Transportation

      • Business Technology

      • Blockchain
      • Broadcast Tech
      • Computer & Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Components
      • Electronic Design Automation
      • Financial Technology
      • High Tech Security
      • Internet Technology
      • Nanotechnology
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Semiconductors
      • View All Business Technology

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Financial Services & Investing

      • Accounting News & Issues
      • Acquisitions, Mergers and Takeovers
      • Banking & Financial Services
      • Bankruptcy
      • Bond & Stock Ratings
      • Conference Call Announcements
      • Contracts
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Dividends
      • Earnings
      • Earnings Forecasts & Projections
      • Financing Agreements
      • Insurance
      • Investments Opinions
      • Joint Ventures
      • Mutual Funds
      • Private Placement
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring & Recapitalization
      • Sales Reports
      • Shareholder Activism
      • Shareholder Meetings
      • Stock Offering
      • Stock Split
      • Venture Capital
      • View All Financial Services & Investing

      • General Business

      • Awards
      • Commercial Real Estate
      • Corporate Expansion
      • Earnings
      • Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
      • Human Resource & Workforce Management
      • Licensing
      • New Products & Services
      • Obituaries
      • Outsourcing Businesses
      • Overseas Real Estate (non-US)
      • Personnel Announcements
      • Real Estate Transactions
      • Residential Real Estate
      • Small Business Services
      • Socially Responsible Investing
      • Surveys, Polls and Research
      • Trade Show News
      • View All General Business

  • Science & Tech
      • Consumer Technology

      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Blockchain
      • Cloud Computing/Internet of Things
      • Computer Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Consumer Electronics
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Gaming
      • Financial Technology
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Multimedia & Internet
      • Peripherals
      • Social Media
      • STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Consumer Technology

      • Energy & Natural Resources

      • Alternative Energies
      • Chemical
      • Electrical Utilities
      • Gas
      • General Manufacturing
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil & Energy
      • Oil and Gas Discoveries
      • Utilities
      • Water Utilities
      • View All Energy & Natural Resources

      • Environ­ment

      • Conservation & Recycling
      • Environmental Issues
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Products & Services
      • Green Technology
      • Natural Disasters
      • View All Environ­ment

      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Agriculture
      • Chemical
      • Construction & Building
      • General Manufacturing
      • HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning)
      • Machinery
      • Machine Tools, Metalworking and Metallurgy
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Paper, Forest Products & Containers
      • Precious Metals
      • Textiles
      • Tobacco
      • View All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Telecomm­unications

      • Carriers and Services
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Telecommunications Equipment
      • Telecommunications Industry
      • VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Telecomm­unications

  • Lifestyle & Health
      • Consumer Products & Retail

      • Animals & Pets
      • Beers, Wines and Spirits
      • Beverages
      • Bridal Services
      • Cannabis
      • Cosmetics and Personal Care
      • Fashion
      • Food & Beverages
      • Furniture and Furnishings
      • Home Improvement
      • Household, Consumer & Cosmetics
      • Household Products
      • Jewelry
      • Non-Alcoholic Beverages
      • Office Products
      • Organic Food
      • Product Recalls
      • Restaurants
      • Retail
      • Supermarkets
      • Toys
      • View All Consumer Products & Retail

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Health

      • Biometrics
      • Biotechnology
      • Clinical Trials & Medical Discoveries
      • Dentistry
      • FDA Approval
      • Fitness/Wellness
      • Health Care & Hospitals
      • Health Insurance
      • Infection Control
      • International Medical Approval
      • Medical Equipment
      • Medical Pharmaceuticals
      • Mental Health
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Supplementary Medicine
      • View All Health

      • Sports

      • General Sports
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Sporting Events
      • Sports Equipment & Accessories
      • View All Sports

      • Travel

      • Amusement Parks and Tourist Attractions
      • Gambling & Casinos
      • Hotels and Resorts
      • Leisure & Tourism
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Passenger Aviation
      • Travel Industry
      • View All Travel

  • Policy & Public Interest
      • Policy & Public Interest

      • Advocacy Group Opinion
      • Animal Welfare
      • Congressional & Presidential Campaigns
      • Corporate Social Responsibility
      • Domestic Policy
      • Economic News, Trends, Analysis
      • Education
      • Environmental
      • European Government
      • FDA Approval
      • Federal and State Legislation
      • Federal Executive Branch & Agency
      • Foreign Policy & International Affairs
      • Homeland Security
      • Labor & Union
      • Legal Issues
      • Natural Disasters
      • Not For Profit
      • Patent Law
      • Public Safety
      • Trade Policy
      • U.S. State Policy
      • View All Policy & Public Interest

  • People & Culture
      • People & Culture

      • Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American
      • African American
      • Asian American
      • Children
      • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
      • Hispanic
      • Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual
      • Men's Interest
      • People with Disabilities
      • Religion
      • Senior Citizens
      • Veterans
      • Women
      • View All People & Culture

  • Hamburger menu
  • Cision PRWeb provides efficient communication tools to continuously engage with target audiences across multiple online channels
  • Create a Free Account
    • ALL CONTACT INFO
    • Contact Us


      11AM ET Sunday – 8PM ET Friday

  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • News in Focus
    • Browse All News
    • Multimedia Gallery
  • Business & Money
    • Auto & Transportation
    • Business Technology
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Financial Services & Investing
    • General Business
  • Science & Tech
    • Consumer Technology
    • Energy & Natural Resources
    • Environ­ment
    • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
    • Telecomm­unications
  • Lifestyle & Health
    • Consumer Products & Retail
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Health
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Policy & Public Interest
  • People & Culture
    • People & Culture
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR

Team of PhD Researchers Unveil AI-powered Platform to Open Source COVID-19 Vaccine Development

Powered by ArangoDB, epitopes.world lets vaccine developers leverage neural network to identify targets for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine testing.


News provided by

ArangoDB Inc.

May 05, 2020, 17:05 ET

Share this article

Share toX

Share this article

Share toX

Epitopes derived from SARS-CoV-2 proteins are presented at the cell surface by MHC molecules. CD8 T cells then recognize these epitopes and proceed to eliminate the virus-infected cells.
Epitopes derived from SARS-CoV-2 proteins are presented at the cell surface by MHC molecules. CD8 T cells then recognize these epitopes and proceed to eliminate the virus-infected cells.

BOSTON and SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- A team of machine learning, immunology, and bioinformatics researchers today unveiled Epitopes.world, an AI-powered, open source, interactive web platform to help accelerate vaccine development for COVID-19. Led by Tariq Daouda, PhD, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, the team behind epitopes.world consists of volunteers who have doctoral degrees in machine learning and immunobiology, as well as bioinformaticians and web developers.

The process to develop a vaccine is typically a very lengthy and costly process due to the number of virus-infected cells that need to be analyzed – which tend to be rare, fragile, and precious. While obtaining his doctorate degree at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer at the Université de Montréal, Dr. Daouda developed an AI algorithm that can predict which parts of a virus are more likely to be exposed at the surface of infected cells, which are called epitopes. These predictions can be used by researchers to generate a significantly shorter list of potential targets to test in the creation of a vaccine -- essentially reducing a process that typically takes weeks or months to hours.

The hope is that the scientific community will be able to leverage the results on Epitopes.world to help prioritize ongoing experimental work towards developing effective vaccination strategies.

Post this

Today, this neural network, called CAMAP, has been made available for any researcher to use on Epitopes.world. Along with generating predictions for potential vaccine targets, epitopes.world will also contain interactive visualizations that will allow researchers to plot their results and use them for further research. In the future, the site will continue to grow with more tools that allow researchers to dive deeper into the data.

"COVID-19 stresses the need to accelerate the design of vaccines and therapies to reduce the human and economic impact of global pandemics," said Tariq Daouda, PhD, team lead of Epitopes.world. "People infected with COVID-19 tend to have a significant decrease in circulating immune cells during the acute infection phase, making it difficult to systematically isolate enough immune cells to study appropriately in a lab. Through the results now available on Epitopes.world, the team is utilizing open source technologies to connect machine learning to biomedicine to help accelerate learnings and findings. The hope is that the scientific community will be able to leverage these results to help prioritize ongoing experimental work towards developing effective vaccination strategies."

Dr. Daouda and his team built epitopes.world using open source technologies, which allowed them to not only accelerate the development of the project, but also allow researchers who use the platform to more easily collaborate and share results with each other. They also have a public API, and the code is available in GitHub under an open-source license.

ArangoDB, the leading open source multi-model graph database, serves as the backend of the portal, storing over 182,000 epitopes and their metadata: approximately 39,000 from SARS-CoV-2, 39,000 from SARS-CoV-1, and 104,000 from normal human sequences for comparison. As an open source, multi-model database, ArangoDB gives epitopes.world a streamlined deployment stack with data access flexibility as the project evolves in the future.

Jörg Schad, PhD, is the Head of Engineering and Machine Learning at ArangoDB and a core member of the epitopes.world team, responsible for the cloud infrastructure and maintenance. In order to support the project, ArangoDB is providing free cloud resources in the form of its fully-managed cloud offering, ArangoDB Oasis.

"The current situation with the novel coronavirus pandemic requires the combined expertise from a wide range of experts and diverse backgrounds ," said Jörg Schad, PhD, Head of Engineering and Machine Learning at ArangoDB. "We are thrilled to be able to collaborate and contribute our knowledge and platform for scalable and high-performance data, and especially graph, processing to this project."

Learn more

  • Epitopes.world research paper
  • Epitopes.world frontend GitHub repository
  • Epitopes.world backend GitHub repository
  • ArangoDB blog post

About epitopes.world
Epitopes.world is made and maintained by a multidisciplinary team of researchers and developers who are committed to share science openly and develop innovative ways of instantly disseminating research results when timing is crucial. Learn more at epitopes.world.

About ArangoDB
One engine. One query language. Multiple data models. With more than 7 million downloads and over 9,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading open source multi-model graph database. It combines the power of graphs with JSON documents, a key-value store, and a full-text search engine, enabling developers to access and combine all of these data models with a single, elegant, declarative query language.

Simplifying complexity and increasing productivity is the mission of ArangoDB Inc., the company behind the project. Founded in 2014, ArangoDB Inc. is a privately-held company backed by Bow Capital and Target Partners. It is headquartered in San Francisco and Cologne, Germany with offices and employees around the world. Learn more at http://www.arangodb.com.

SOURCE ArangoDB Inc.

Related Links

http://www.arangodb.com

Modal title

How Epitopes.world's AI algorithm, called CAMAP, can help develop a COVID-19 vaccine
How Epitopes.world's AI algorithm, called CAMAP, can help develop a COVID-19 vaccine
How Epitopes.world's AI algorithm, called CAMAP, can help develop a COVID-19 vaccine

Contact PRWeb

  • 11AM ET Sunday – 8PM ET Friday
  • Contact Us

About PRWeb

  • About PRWeb
  • Partners
  • Partnership Programs
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Resources

Why PRWeb

  • Why PRWeb
  • How It Works
  • Who Uses It
  • Pricing

Accounts

  • Create a Free Account
  • Log in
  • Contact Us

Do not sell or share my personal information:

  • Submit via [email protected] 
  • Call Privacy toll-free: 877-297-8921

Contact Cision

Products

About

My Services
  • All News Releases
  • Online Member Center
  • ProfNet
Cision Distribution Helpline
888-776-0942
  • Legal
  • Site Map
  • RSS
  • Cookie Settings
Copyright © 2025 Cision US Inc.