A significant part of the work we do here in OPIG revolves around antibodies, the proteins of the immune system that bind to and help remove any foreign entities that find their way into the body. Since antibodies can be developed that target basically anything, they have become extremely useful as therapeutics. In our research, we develop computational tools that can be incorporated into various points along the antibody discovery pipeline. These tools include our database of antibody structures, SAbDab, and a series of predictive tools (e.g. structural modelling algorithms like ABodyBuilder) which are known collectively as SAbPred.

The tools of the SAbDab-SAbPred platform are freely available to use online. However, in some situations, it may be desirable to have a local version of our software (e.g. when using confidential data, or if many jobs need to be run concurrently). We have therefore created SAbBox: a virtual machine that comes with the complete SAbDab-SAbPred platform pre-installed and ready to use.

SAbBox is very simple to install and use. All it requires to work are two pieces of open-source software, Vagrant and VirtualBox. After running a few simple commands, the machine is ready! Installing as a virtual machine means that an operating system with all its software is run in a special environment on top of the existing operating system. All the tools are available then to use how you wish – as command line tools, or through easy-to-use forms via the web front. The SAbDab-SAbPred platform is therefore now available in a single place through a simple install, and can be easily managed and transferred between systems. 

SAbBox is available now from the OUI Software Store!