Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

MarkerDB (https://markerdb.ca) has become a leading resource for comprehensive information on molecular biomarkers. Over the past 3 years, the database has evolved significantly, reflecting the dynamic landscape of biomarker research and increasing demands from its user community. This year's update, which is called MarkerDB 2.0, introduces key improvements to enhance the database's usability, consistency and the range of biomarkers covered. These improvements include (i) the addition of thousands of new biomarkers and associated health conditions, (ii) the inclusion of many new biomarker types and categories, (iii) upgraded searches and data filtering functionalities, (iv) new features for exploring and understanding biomarker panels and (v) significantly expanded and improved descriptions. These upgrades, along with numerous minor improvements in content, interface, layout and overall website performance, have greatly enhanced MarkerDB's usability and capacity to facilitate biomarker interpretation across various research domains. MarkerDB remains committed to providing a free, publicly accessible platform for consolidated information on a wide range of molecular (protein, genetic, chromosomal and chemical/small molecule) biomarkers, covering diagnostic, prognostic, risk, monitoring, safety and response-related biomarkers. We are confident that these upgrades and updates will improve MarkerDB's user friendliness, increase its utility and greatly expand its potential applications to many other areas of clinical medicine and biomedical research.

MarkerDB is a freely available electronic database that attempts to consolidate information on all known clinical and a selected set of pre-clinical molecular biomarkers into a single resource. The database includes four major types of molecular biomarkers (chemical, protein, DNA [genetic] and karyotypic) and four biomarker categories (diagnostic, predictive, prognostic and exposure). MarkerDB provides information such as: biomarker names and synonyms, associated conditions or pathologies, detailed disease descriptions, detailed biomarker descriptions, biomarker specificity, sensitivity and ROC curves, standard reference values (for protein and chemical markers), variants (for SNP or genetic markers), sequence information (for genetic and protein markers), molecular structures (for protein and chemical markers), tissue or biofluid sources (for protein and chemical markers), chromosomal location and structure (for genetic and karyotype markers), clinical approval status and relevant literature references. Users can browse the data by conditions, condition categories, biomarker types, biomarker categories or search by sequence similarity through the advanced search function. Currently, the database contains 142 protein biomarkers, 1089 chemical biomarkers, 154 karyotype biomarkers and 26 374 genetic markers. These are categorized into 25 560 diagnostic biomarkers, 102 prognostic biomarkers, 265 exposure biomarkers and 6746 predictive biomarkers or biomarker panels. Collectively, these markers can be used to detect, monitor or predict 670 specific human conditions which are grouped into 27 broad condition categories. MarkerDB is available at https://markerdb.ca.