NPCARE: database of natural products and fractional extracts for cancer regulation

Hwanho Choi,Soomin Lee,Ho Jeong Pak,Yeeun Cho,Byung Hee Gong,Geunbae Choi,Yeon Seok Kang,Jung-Yun Choi,Taehoon Han,Yoon Jae Lee,Youngsoo Kim,Hwangseo Park,Dekwoo Ryoo,Sun Young Cho

doi:10.1186/s13321-016-0188-5

Abstract

BackgroundNatural products have increasingly attracted much attention as a valuable resource for the development of anticancer medicines due to the structural novelty and good bioavailability. This necessitates a comprehensive database for the natural products and the fractional extracts whose anticancer activities have been verified.DescriptionNPCARE (http://silver.sejong.ac.kr/npcare) is a publicly accessible online database of natural products and fractional extracts for cancer regulation. At NPCARE, one can explore 6578 natural compounds and 2566 fractional extracts isolated from 1952 distinct biological species including plants, marine organisms, fungi, and bacteria whose anticancer activities were validated with 1107 cell lines for 34 cancer types. Each entry in NPCARE is annotated with the cancer type, genus and species names of the biological resource, the cell line used for demonstrating the anticancer activity, PubChem ID, and a wealth of information about the target gene or protein. Besides the augmentation of plant entries up to 743 genus and 197 families, NPCARE is further enriched with the natural products and the fractional extracts of diverse non-traditional biological resources.ConclusionsNPCARE is anticipated to serve as a dominant gateway for the discovery of new anticancer medicines due to the inclusion of a large number of the fractional extracts as well as the natural compounds isolated from a variety of biological resources.

Highlights

Natural products have increasingly attracted much attention as a valuable resource for the develop‐ ment of anticancer medicines due to the structural novelty and good bioavailability
With respect to the lead discovery, it is worth noting that natural products and their direct derivatives occupy 34% of new drugs approved over a few decades by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [2]
Some data are hyperlinked to various external databases and web resources including PubChem, UniProtKB, ExPASy, HUGO gene nomenclature committee (HGNC), catalogue of somatic mutations in cancer (COSMIC), Ensembl, American type culture collection (ATCC), and National Center for Biotechnology Informa‐ tion (NCBI) at which further information is available for the natural product of interest, the target gene or protein, and the cell line

Summary

D ATA B A S E

NPCARE: database of natural products and fractional extracts for cancer regulation. Hwanho Choi, Sun Young Cho, Ho Jeong Pak, Youngsoo Kim, Jung‐yun Choi, Yoon Jae Lee, Byung Hee Gong, Yeon Seok Kang, Taehoon Han, Geunbae Choi, Yeeun Cho, Soomin Lee, Dekwoo Ryoo and Hwangseo Park1*.

Conclusions

Background

Findings

Conclusion