Esophageal cancer suffers a lack of reliable biomarkers that could be used in the early detection of malignancy. To help accelerate progress in identifying biomarkers and drug candidates, a team led by Manipal University in India has developed the esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) Atlas. As referenced in a recent publication in Scientific Reports, the database integrates genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic ESCC-related genes from published literature.
“Over the last decade, a number of studies are published on ESCC using genomics and proteomics high throughput techniques. Unfortunately, the generated data remain scattered in literature and unavailable as a compendium to the scientific community,” the team mentions in the paper.
To date, the atlas contains 3,475 genes manually curated from over 400 unique publications with data derived from either primary ESCC tissues or established ESCC cell lines. The resulting genes are associated to molecular signatures related to altered transcription and translation, copy number and structural variations, SNPs, DNA and histone modifications, and miRNA-based regulation.
“We strongly feel that ESCC ATLAS provides a novel and comprehensive tool for the systematic identification of molecular alterations in ESCC, which could be useful for the discovery of novel anticancer drugs targeting the ESCC, or for better understanding of the ESCC pathogenesis,” the team concluded.
“Hence we will invite researchers in the field of ESCC to deposit their data so that along with them, rest of the world also have access to the recent data on ESCC.”
The ESCC ATLAS is freely accessible at http://www.esccatlas.org.