namiRa: A comprehensive, manually curated database for MicroRNA expression, function, and deregulation in cancer

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have the potential to serve as oncogenes or tumor suppressors, playing important roles in the pathogenesis of human cancers. Despite the growing recognition of miRNA significance, the contributed information remains scattered in the publications. This fragmentation underscores the need for a centralized and comprehensive database that consolidates miRNA expression patterns, functional roles, and regulatory interactions across diverse cancer types. So far, several miRNA databases have been developed, but neither of them enables in-depth functional analysis or comparative visualization of miRNA data. Here, we present namiRa, a manually curated database, to offer a comprehensive resource for miRNA expression and functional significance in various types of cancer, describing miRNA-cancer associations based on a thorough review of the literature. namiRa provides an extensive collection of miRNA expression profiles, detection methods, functional analyses for miRNAs in vitro and in vivo, and visualized regulatory networks across different cancer types. The current version of namiRa documents curated relationships between 1095 human miRNAs and 33 types of human cancers, based on data from 9983 published papers. namiRa is accessible at https://www.namira-db.com.