D816–D819 Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol. 37, Database issue doi:10.1093/nar/gkn673 Published online 5 October 2008 CTdatabase: a knowledge-base of high-throughput and curated data on cancer-testis antigens Luiz Gonzaga Almeida1, Noboru J. Sakabe2, Alice R. deOliveira1, Maria Cristina C. Silva1, Alex S. Mundstein1, Tzeela Cohen3, Yao-Tseng Chen3, Ramon Chua3, Sita Gurung3, Sacha Gnjatic3, Achim A. Jungbluth3, Ot a´via L. Caballero3, Amos Bairoch4, Eva Kiesler3, Sarah L. White3, Andrew J. G. Simpson3, Lloyd J. Old3, Anamaria A. Camargo5 and Ana Tereza R. Vasconcelos1,* 1Laborato´ rio Nacional de Computac¸ a˜ o Cientı´fica, Petro´ polis, RJ, Brazil, 2Human Genetics Department, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 3Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, New York, NY, USA, 4Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) and Structural Biology and Bioinformatics Department, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland and 5Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Sa˜ o Paulo, SP, Brazil Received August 14, 2008; Revised September 21, 2008; Accepted September 22, 2008 ABSTRACT The potency of the immune response has still to be harnessed effectively to combat human cancers. However, the discovery of T-cell targets in melano- mas and other tumors has raised the possibility that cancer vaccines can be used to induce a therapeu- tically effective immune response against cancer. The targets, cancer-testis (CT) antigens, are immu- nogenic proteins preferentially expressed in normal gametogenic tissues and different histological types of tumors. Therapeutic cancer vaccines directed against CT antigens are currently in late-stage clin- ical trials testing whether they can delay or prevent recurrence of lung cancer and melanoma following surgical removal of primary tumors. CT antigens constitute a large, but ill-defined, family of proteins that exhibit a remarkably restricted expression. Currently, there is a considerable amount of infor- mation about these proteins, but the data are scat- tered through the literature and in several bioinformatic databases. The database presented here, CTdatabase (http://www.cta.lncc.br), unifies this knowledge to facilitate both the mining of the existing deluge of data, and the identification of pro- teins alleged to be CT antigens, but that do not have their characteristic restricted expression pattern. CTdatabase is more than a repository of CT antigen data, since all the available information was care- fully curated and annotated with most data being specifically processed for CT antigens and stored locally. Starting from a compilation of known CT antigens, CTdatabase provides basic information including gene names and aliases, RefSeq acces- sion numbers, genomic location, known splicing variants, gene duplications and additional family members. Gene expression at the mRNA level in normal and tumor tissues has been collated from publicly available data obtained by several different technologies. Manually curated data related to mRNA and protein expression, and antigen-specific immune responses in cancer patients are also avail- able, together with links to PubMed for relevant CT antigen articles. INTRODUCTION More than 11 million people are diagnosed with cancer every year causing 12.5% of all deaths worldwide (World Health Organization, 2006). Novel forms of cancer treat- ment are desperately needed, and immunotherapy repre- sents an approach that has yet to be fully explored. One form of immunotherapy is the therapeutic cancer vaccine that induces the immune response to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Such vaccines can be based on speciﬁc antigens, such as the CT antigens that are speciﬁcally expressed in tumors with limited expression elsewhere in the patient’s tissues. Advanced clinical trials of CT anti- gens are underway. In 2007, GlaxoSmithKline initiated the largest-ever lung cancer trial to test the ability of a *To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +55 24 22336065; Fax: +55 24 33 6124; Email: atrv@lncc.br The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors. 2008 The Author(s) This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.