CSCdb: a cancer stem cells portal for markers, related genes and functional information

Cancer stem cells (CSCs), which have the ability to self-renew and differentiate into various tumor cell types, are a special class of tumor cells. Characterizing the genes involved in CSCs regulation is fundamental to understand the mechanisms underlying the biological process and develop treatment methods for tumor therapy. Recently, much effort has been expended in the study of CSCs and a large amount of data has been generated. However, to the best of our knowledge, database dedicated to CSCs is not available until now. We have thus developed a CSCs database (CSCdb), which includes marker genes, CSCs-related genes/microRNAs and functional annotations. The information in the CSCdb was manual collected from about 13 000 articles. The CSCdb provides detailed information of 1769 genes that have been reported to participate in the functional regulation of CSCs and 74 marker genes that can be used for identification or isolation of CSCs. The CSCdb also provides 9475 annotations about 13 CSCs-related functions, such as oncogenesis, radio resistance, tumorigenesis, differentiation, etc. Annotations of the identified genes, which include protein function description, post-transcription modification information, related literature, Gene Ontology (GO), protein-protein interaction (PPI) information and regulatory relationships, are integrated into the CSCdb to help users get information more easily. CSCdb provides a comprehensive resource for CSCs research work, which would assist in finding new CSCs-related genes and would be a useful tool for biologists. Database URL: http://bioinformatics.ustc.edu.cn/cscdb.