Urinary Protein Biomarker Database 2.0: A Literature-Curated Database For Protein Biomarkers In Urine

Urine is a valuable source of biomarkers. Current proteomic technologies can identify hundreds of differentially expressed proteins between disease and control samples in a single experiment; however, selection of promise biomarker candidates for further validation study remains difficult. UPBD (Urinary Protein Biomarker Database) was established to collect information of urinary biomarkers or biomarker candidates from published literature in 2011. Both proteomic and non-proteomic studies on all kinds of urine specimens from patients or experimental animals were included in UPBD. To ensure the quality of the database, all research articles were manually curated. This database was updated to version 2.0 in 2017. Standardization of database content was conducted by using terms from several commonly used ontologies and controlled vocabularies. The potential usage of each biomarker (e.g., diagnosis, prognosis) was added as a new field. A new, user-friendly website was developed to provide free browse, search, and download services for nonprofit users. The URL of UPBD 2.0 is http://upbd.bmicc.cn/.