IDBD: infectious disease biomarker database.

Biomarkers enable early diagnosis, guide molecularly targeted therapy and monitor the activity and therapeutic responses across a variety of diseases. Despite intensified interest and research, however, the overall rate of development of novel biomarkers has been falling. Moreover, no solution is yet available that efficiently retrieves and processes biomarker information pertaining to infectious diseases. Infectious Disease Biomarker Database (IDBD) is one of the first efforts to build an easily accessible and comprehensive literature-derived database covering known infectious disease biomarkers. IDBD is a community annotation database, utilizing collaborative Web 2.0 features, providing a convenient user interface to input and revise data online. It allows users to link infectious diseases or pathogens to protein, gene or carbohydrate biomarkers through the use of search tools. It supports various types of data searches and application tools to analyze sequence and structure features of potential and validated biomarkers. Currently, IDBD integrates 611 biomarkers for 66 infectious diseases and 70 pathogens. It is publicly accessible at http://biomarker.cdc.go.kr and http://biomarker.korea.ac.kr.