Abstract
IMGT, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system (http://www.imgt.org), was createdin 1989 by Marie-Paule Lefranc, Laboratoired’ImmunoGe´ ne´tique Mole´ culaire LIGM (Universite´Montpellier 2 and CNRS) at Montpellier, France, inorder to standardize and manage the complexity ofimmunogenetics data. The building of a uniqueontology, IMGT-ONTOLOGY, has made IMGT theglobal reference in immunogenetics and immunoinformatics. IMGT is a high-quality integrated knowledge resource specialized in the immunoglobulinsor antibodies, T cell receptors, major histocompatibility complex, of human and other vertebratespecies, proteins of the IgSF and MhcSF, andrelated proteins of the immune systems of any species. IMGT provides a common access to standardized data from genome, proteome, genetics and 3Dstructures. IMGT consists of five databases (IMGT/LIGM-DB, IMGT/GENE-DB, IMGT/3Dstructure-DB,etc.), fifteen interactive online tools for sequence,genome and 3D structure analysis, and more than10 000 HTML pages of synthesis and knowledge.IMGT is used in medical research (autoimmunediseases, infectious diseases, AIDS, leukemias, lymphomas and myelomas), veterinary research, biotechnology related to antibody engineering (phagedisplays, combinatorial libraries, chimeric, humanized and human antibodies), diagnostics (clonalities, detection and follow-up of residual diseases)and therapeutical approaches (graft, immunotherapy, vaccinology).