About PLAbDab

The Patent and Literature Antibody Database (PLAbDab) is a self-updating repository containing over 150,000 paired antibody sequences derived from patents and academic papers. Each entry contains a link to its primary literature source, where additional information about its functional characteristics can often be found.

PLAbDab has many potential uses including (a) annotating query antibody sequences with antigen information from similar entries, (b) analysing structural models of existing antibodies to identify modifications that could improve their properties, and (c) compiling bespoke datasets of antibody sequences/structures known to bind to a specific antigen.

You can search PLAbDab by keyword, by sequence, or -uniquely- by structure relative to a query antibody. Precomputed ABodyBuilder2 models of each entry in the database facilitate rapid structural searches.

PLAbDab was built by the Oxford Protein Informatics Group (OPIG) under an open-innovation agreement. A publication preprint and a public GitHub repository are available.

For any queries or to report an issue with this web application, please, email us at "opig[~at~]stats.ox.ac.uk"

Similarly, for the PLAbDab Python API you can contact us or open an issue on GitHub with enough details to help us troubleshoot.


>   Downloads
Paired sequences (.csv.gz), 11.0 MB
Unpaired sequences (.csv.gz), 42.0 MB
PLAbDab models (.tar.gz), 4.6 GB
All PLAbDab data (.tar.gz), 4.7 GB

Some browsers, such as Safari and Chrome, may attempt to automatically unzip .gz files. If you wish to download the file instead of vieweing it in your browser, you should disable automatic extraction in your browser settings.

>   Search Database by Keyword

PLAbDab can be searched using regular expressions for keywords contained in the title of the source literature.

If searching for a specific antigen target name, not every synonym will be captured. You can use a regular expression to extend your search coverage, e.g., "RSV|Respiratory Syncytial Virus" (no quotation marks)

Keyword or regex:

>   Search Database by Sequence

Please enter an antibody sequence to find entries with the highest sequence identity in PLAbDab.

Fv Heavy sequence:
Fv Light sequence:
Antibody region to search:
Sort results by:
Matched-length search:
Sequence identity cutoff (%):

Maximum number of sequences to return:

>   Search Database by Structure

Please enter an antibody sequence to find entries with the most similar CDR structure in PLAbDab.

If a sequence identity cutoff is specified, only results with a CDR sequence identity above this cutoff will be returned.

Fv Heavy sequence:
Fv Light sequence:
RMSD cutoff (Å):

CDR region sequence identity cutoff (%):

Maximum number of sequences to return:

Brennan Abanades et al. “The Patent and Literature Antibody Database (PLAbDab):
an evolving reference set of functionally diverse, literature-annotated antibody sequences and structures”. In: Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 52, Issue D1, 5 January 2024, Pages D545-D551 [ link]

Download BibTex Reference

Header image credit: David Goodsell