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About IMGT

IMGT® attachment and affiliation

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IMGT authority: LIGM (Montpellier)

The Laboratoire d'ImmunoGénétique Moléculaire (LIGM) (Prof. Marie-Paule Lefranc and Prof. Gérard Lefranc), Université Montpellier 2, UPR CNRS 1142, IGH, has been involved for more than 30 years in the genetics, structure, polymorphism and function of the immunoglobulins and T cell receptors.

The scientific contribution of LIGM is shown by more than 300 publications in international journals, 400 communications, more than 200 invitations to congresses and seminars, the isolation of 40 genomic probes. These probes, released by ATCC (American Type Culture Collection), JCRB (Japanese Cancer Research Resources Bank) and ICRF (Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Human Genetic Resource Centre), are used by many laboratories abroad, for fundamental research and clinical applications. Some of these probes are powerful tools in the characterisation of the B and T cells, the analysis of clonality in leukemias and lymphomas, and the therapeutics follow up (residual diseases). 134 genomic sequences have been sent to the EMBL/GenBank databases.

In 1989, LIGM started IMGT/LIGM-DB the first specialised and integrated database on immunoglobulins and T cell receptors. Since May 2000 and owing to the considerable expansion and success of IMGT®, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system®, the LIGM scientific activity has been mainly devoted to the IMGT research and development.

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IMGT information system overview

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IMGT®, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system® http://www.imgt.org, is a high-quality integrated information system specialized in the immunoglobulins (IG), T cell receptors (TR), major histocompatibility complex (MHC), proteins of the immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) and of the MHC superfamily (MhcSF) and related proteins of the immune system (RPI) of human and other vertebrate species, created in 1989 by Marie-Paule Lefranc (LIGM, Université Montpellier 2, CNRS, Montpellier, France). IMGT®, a European project since 1992, works in close collaboration with EBI. Expertly annotated information and data standardization are provided, based on the IMGT-ONTOLOGY concepts and on the IMGT Scientific chart rules. The IMGT server provides a common data access to all immunogenetics data via a user friendly interface.

IMGT® provides a common access to standardized and expertly annotated data on IG, TR, MHC, IgSF, MhcSF and RPI data which include nucleotide and protein sequences, gene maps, genetic polymorphisms, specificities, 2D and 3D structures. IMGT® consists of databases, Web resources and interactive tools.

Databases
sequence databases
genome database (LIGM, Montpellier)
3D structure database (LIGM, Montpellier)
Web resources comprising 10,000 HTML pages
IMGT Web resources (LIGM, Montpellier) available at http://www.imgt.org
Interactive on-line tools
All interactive on-line tools are available at http://www.imgt.org
for sequence analysis (LIGM, Montpellier)
for genome analysis (LIGM, Montpellier)
for 3D structure analysis (LIGM, Montpellier)

IMGT® has been available on the Web since July 1995. IMGT® provides the biologists, researchers and clinicians with an easy to use and friendly interface. IMGT® has an exceptional response with more than 150,000 work sessions a month. Visitors are equally distributed between the European Union, the United States and the remaining world. IMGT/LIGM-DB data are also distributed by the HTTP or FTP and from many Sequence Retrieval System (SRS) sites. IMGT/LIGM-DB can be searched by BLAST or FASTA on different servers (EBI, Institut Pasteur, IGH...).

By its high quality and its easy data distribution, IMGT® has important implications in medical research (repertoires in autoimmune and infectious diseases, AIDS, leukemias, lymphomas, myelomas, allergy), veterinary research, functional genomics, genome diversity, genome evolution studies and comparative genomics of the adaptative immune system, biotechnology related to antibody engineering (combinatorial libraries, phage displays, single chain Fragment scFv, chimeric, humanized and human antibodies), diagnostic (detection and follow up of residual diseases), and therapeutical approaches (grafts, immunotherapy, vaccinology).

IMGT® has become the international reference in immunogenetics and immunoinformatics. At the cutting edge of immunology and bioinformatics, IMGT® is an invaluable integrated database for both fundamental, pharmaceutical, veterinary and clinical research.

IMGT initiator and coordinator: Marie-Paule Lefranc (Marie-Paule.Lefranc@igh.cnrs.fr), Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Professor Université Montpellier 2
IMGT, LIGM, IGH, UPR CNRS 1142, Montpellier (France)

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IMGT server environment

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Computing environment
The IMGT information system is localized for a part at the Centre Informatique National de l'Enseignement Supérieur (CINES), and for another part at the Laboratoire d'ImmunoGénétique Moléculaire (LIGM), Institut de Génétique Humaine (IGH) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Montpellier, France.
Software environment
  • The operating system is Linux.
  • The Web servers are HTTP and Tomcat from The Apache Software Foundation.
  • The databases are hosted on Sybase system (Sybase Inc.) at the CINES.
  • The programs are written in Java, Perl and Bourne shell.
Network environment
The Internet access is provided by the french academic network RENATER.

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IMGT history

The project of an integrated system in Immunogenetics has been started in 1989 by Marie-Paule Lefranc of the Université Montpellier 2, CNRS, Montpellier, France.

A prototype of the ImMunoGeneTics information system was developed in France for Immunoglobulin and T cell receptor sequences (LIGM-DB) by the Laboratoire d'ImmunoGénétique Moléculaire (LIGM, CNRS, Université Montpellier 2, Montpellier), in collaboration with the Centre National Universitaire Sud de Calcul (CNUSC, Montpellier, Sophie Creuzet and Denys Chaume) and the Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Micro-électronique de Montpellier (LIRMM, CNRS, Université Montpellier 2, Montpellier, Isabelle Mougenot and Patrice Déhais).

In 1992 the database became truly european with the collaboration of EMBL (Rainer Fuchs), IFG (Werner Müller), ICRF (Julia Bodmer) and the obtention of a EU European Union BIOMED1 funding (BIOCT930038).
IMGT/LIGM-DB is available on the Web WWW server of CINES at Montpellier since July 1995. The first demonstration on line was performed at the 9th International Congress of Immunology at San Francisco, USA (23-29 July 1995). IMGT/MHC-HLA, for human MHC (or HLA) class I and class II sequences maintained by ANRI, London, is on the WWW EBI server since December 1998.

IMGT®, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system®, enhanced its development through a collaboration between LIGM, EMBL-EBI, Cancer Research UK, EUROGENTEC and BPRC (European Community 5th PCRDT funding QLG2-2000-01287). IMGT® is part of ImmunoGrid of the EU 6th PCRDT (IST-2004-028069) and of ELIXIR (2008).

IMGT significant dates:
1989
  • Creation of IMGT® at the Human Gene Mapping 10 Workshop (HGM10), New Haven (USA) (11-17 June 1989)
1993-1996
  • European Union BIOMED1 funding (BIOCT930038)
1995
  • IMGT/LIGM-DB on the Web, for the first time, at the 9th International Congress of Immunology (9,000 participants), San Francisco (USA) (23-29 July 1995)
1996-1999
  • European Union BIOTECH2 funding (BIO4CT960037)
1997
  • First IMGT Collier de Perles on the Web (April 1997)
  • IMGT/V-QUEST on the Web (07 July 1997)
1998
  • IMGT/MHC-HLA on the Web (December 1998)
1999
  • IMGT® has the honour, for its 10th anniversary, of the cover of the Nucleic Acids Research database issue (January 1999)
2000-2003
2001
  • IMGT® identified as operational RIO platform (Bioinformatics) at the French national level (CNRS, INSERM, CEA, INRA)
  • IMGT/GeneSearch, IMGT/GeneView andIMGT/LocusView on the Web (17 April 2001)
  • IMGT/JunctionAnalysis on the Web (17 june 2001)
  • IMGT/3Dstructure-DB on the Web (01 October 2001)
2002
  • IMGT/StructuralQuery on the Web (15 January 2002)
  • IMGT/Phylogene on the Web (10 February 2002)
  • IMGT/PRIMER-DB on the Web (22 February 2002)
  • IMGT/MHC-NHP, IMGT/MHC-DLA and -FLA on the Web (April 2002)
  • NetWatch of Science "Blueprints of Immunity", Science, vol. 296, p. 1207 (17 May 2002)
  • IMGT/AlleleAlign on the Web (3 June 2002)
2003
  • Editorial "The International ImMunoGeneTics database IMGT", by Warr, G.W., Clem, W. and Söderhäll, K. Dev. Comp. Immunol. 27,1 (2003) pdf (27 January 2003)
  • IMGT/GENE-DB on the Web (31 January 2003)
  • ADER Prize for IMGT/PRIMER-DB implementation
2004
  • IMGT/GeneInfo on the Web (14 January 2003)
  • IMGT 15 years ! at the 12th International Congress of Immunology, Montreal (Canada) (18-23 July 2004)
  • IMGT-Choreography funded as BioSTIC project
2005
  • IMGT® on the Ensembl Genome Browser
2006
  • BIOSYS, ImmunoGrid
2007
  • IMGT® received the label IBiSA
2008
  • Formal IMGT-ONTOLOGY, IMGT-Kaleidoscope

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IMGT executive and scientific committees

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