Abstract
The early detection of cancer holds the key to combat and control the increasing global burden of cancer morbidity and mortality. Blood-based screenings using circulating DNAs (ctDNAs), circulating RNA (ctRNAs), circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and extracellular vesicles (EVs) have shown promising prospects in the early detection of cancer. Recent high-throughput gene expression profiling of blood samples from cancer patients has provided a valuable resource for developing new biomarkers for the early detection of cancer. However, a well-organized online repository for these blood-based high-throughput gene expression data is still not available. Here, we present BBCancer (http://bbcancer.renlab.org/), a web-accessible and comprehensive open resource for providing the expression landscape of six types of RNAs, including messenger RNAs (mRNAs), long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs), circular RNAs (circRNAs), tRNA-derived fragments (tRFRNAs) and Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in blood samples, including plasma, CTCs and EVs, from cancer patients with various cancer types. Currently, BBCancer contains expression data of the six RNA types from 5040 normal and tumor blood samples across 15 cancer types. We believe this database will serve as a powerful platform for developing blood biomarkers.
Highlights
The early detection of cancer can greatly reduce the probability of distance metastasis, thereby improving the survival rate of cancer patients [1]
All results were scaled by cancer type and presented in a heat map, allowing users to interactively explore the expression of RNAs of interest
We found that 144 (82 messenger RNAs (mRNAs), 62 miRNAs) out of 314 biomarkers had significantly higher expression in tumor blood samples compared to normal blood samples in at least one cancer type (Figure 3C)
Summary
The early detection of cancer can greatly reduce the probability of distance metastasis, thereby improving the survival rate of cancer patients [1]. The measures of early detection include screening of cancer cells or tissues before symptoms are present and recognizing early symptoms before cancer progression. While a number of methods for early detection of cancer are proposed, only a handful of cancer screening methods are shown to be effective in the clinic. Liquid biopsy methods (mainly blood-based tests) for the early detection of cancer have received much attention [2]. The data on blood-based tests are promising, but the specificity and sensitivity are still challenging [3,4]. An ideal set of biomarker molecules and effective algorithms are needed to develop an accurate blood-based testing method
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