CCDB

1. What is CCDB?
2. Why CCDB was created?
3. What is unique about CCDB?
4. Does this database represent all genes associated with CC?
5. To whom can I report a bug or discrepancy?

Ans 1. CCDB (Cervical Cancer gene Database) is a comprehensive collection of the genes contributing to the etiology and pathogenesis of cervix cancer.

Ans 2. Carcinoma of the uterine cervix is the most common malignancy which affects women in several parts of the world and causes high mortality. It has been accounted that ~5 lakhs new cases are reported and 274,000 deaths occur each year due to this disease. In India, it is the leading cancer among women with an annual incidence of about 130,000 cases and 70-75,000 deaths. Inspite of the large population affected from this malignancy still at present there is no database that catalogues genes involved in cervix cancer. Therefore, CCDB was constructed to:

1) Catalog gene-related facts of the cervix diseases cumulated in the literature database in structured format for fast and easy access;

2) To deliver value added information;

3) To serve researchers and clinicians a system to browse through and extract the basic and advanced information about the genes involved in cervix cancer.

Ans 3. a) CCDB, to the best of our knowledge is the first collection of genes associated with CC, which has been manually curated.

b) Using CCDB a user can extract information regarding the aberrant biological process a gene is involved that leads to cervix carcinogenesis.

c) A user can find if his gene of ineterest is differentially expressed in cervix cancer.

d) Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor genes have long been associated with various cancers including cervical cancer. It is now considered one of the important mechanism for silencing gene expression and in neoplasia abnormal patterns of DNA methylation is observed. CCDB facilitates and is helpful in providing information about tumor suppressor genes that have been found hypermethylated in cervix cancer.

e) Also CCDB facilitates identification of orthologous genes in various eukaryotic genomes corresponding to the user searched gene.

Ans 4. No. This collection is the result of first round curation and we have already another list of approximately 50 genes which we plan to incorporate in the first update.

Ans 5. Please refer to the "Contact Us" page.