Since its original publication in 2013, we have added several advanced search features to the Structural Antibody Database. This post aims to give an overview over some of these features.

Search auxiliary databases

It is now possible to identify all antibody structures matching entries in the Coronavirus-binding Antibody Database (CoVAbDab) and/or the Therapeutic Structural Antibody Database (TheraSAbDab). To this purpose, on the SAbDab structure search page, under “Search structures by attribute”, set “Is in CoVAbDab” and/or “Is in TheraSabDab” to True to search specifically over the (when I wrote this post) 380 antibody structures matching CoVAbDab entries and/or the 370 antibody structures matching TheraSAbDab entries.

Keyword search

We now provide the option to perform a keyword search over several annotation fields within SAbDab. For this purpose, on the SAbDab structure search page, under “Search structures by attribute”, select one of three annotation fields to search: “antigen” (the names of the antigens in SAbDab according to their PDB annotation), “title” (the concatenation of the title of the structure and the title of the primary citation of the structure) and “organism” and input a keyword to perform a search for any structure in SAbDab for which the keyword string is contained in the search field. Up to ten queries can be combined using OR logic. This enables the creation of highly specialised datasets.

Set up email alerts

Any combination of search queries possible in the “Search structures by attribute” field can be turned into an automated email alert. To do this, input the search query in the “Create email alert for new additions to SAbDab” and provide your email address to receive a weekly email listing all new matches to your query in the weekly SAbDab update (if any exist). To receive a summary of all structures added to SAbDab each week, do not specify any search criteria in your submission.