dbDEPC 2.0: updated database of differentially expressed proteins in human cancers

A large amount of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) have been identified in various cancer proteomics experiments, curation and annotation of these proteins are important in deciphering their roles in oncogenesis and tumor progression, and may further help to discover potential protein biomarkers for clinical applications. In 2009, we published the first database of DEPs in human cancers (dbDEPCs). In this updated version of 2011, dbDEPC 2.0 has more than doubly expanded to over 4000 protein entries, curated from 331 experiments across 20 types of human cancers. This resource allows researchers to search whether their interested proteins have been reported changing in certain cancers, to compare their own proteomic discovery with previous studies, to picture selected protein expression heatmap across multiple cancers and to relate protein expression changes with aberrance in other genetic level. New important developments include addition of experiment design information, advanced filter tools for customer-specified analysis and a network analysis tool. We expect dbDEPC 2.0 to be a much more powerful tool than it was in its first release and can serve as reference to both proteomics and cancer researchers. dbDEPC 2.0 is available at http://lifecenter.sgst.cn/dbdepc/index.do.