FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

1. What is ECDB?
2. Why ECDB is created?
3. What is unique about ECDB?
4. Does this database represent all genes associated with EC?
5. To whom can I report a bug or discrepancy?

Ans 1. ECDB (Endometrial Cancer gene Database) is a comprehensive collection of the genes contributing to the etiology and pathogenesis of endometrial cancer.

Ans 2. Carcinoma of the endometria is the most common malignancy which affects women in several parts of the world (specially western countries) and causes high mortality. Inspite of the large population affected from this malignancy still at present there is no database that catalogues genes involved in endometrial cancer. Therefore, ECDB is constructed to:

1) Catalog gene-related facts of the endometrial diseases cumulated in the literature database in structured format for fast and easy access.

2) To deliver value added information like Pubmed citations, pathways, SNPs, patterns, profiles, superfamily and cross-reference to other cancer databases.

3) To serve researchers and clinicians a system to browse through and extract the basic and advanced information about the genes involved in endometrial cancer.

Ans 3. a) ECDB, to the best of our knowledge is the first collection of genes associated with EC, which has been manually curated.

b) Using ECDB a user can extract information regarding the aberrant biological process a gene is involved that leads to endometrial carcinogenesis.

c) A user can find if his gene of ineterest is differentially expressed in endometrial cancer.

d) Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor genes have long been associated with various cancers including endometrial cancer. It is now considered one of the important mechanism for silencing gene expression and in neoplasia abnormal patterns of DNA methylation is observed. ECDB facilitates and is helpful in providing information about tumor suppressor genes that have been found hypermethylated in endometrial cancer.

e) ECDB facilitates identification of orthologous genes in various eukaryotic genomes corresponding to the user searched gene.

f) ECDB facilitates comparison with genes in other cancer databases (like ovarian, cervical, Esophageal and prostate).

Ans 4. No. This collection is the result of first round curation.

Ans 5. Please refer to the "Contact Us" page.