In-Cardiome: integrated knowledgebase for coronary artery disease enabling translational research

Abstract Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of death worldwide. Prevention, diagnosis and clinical interventions are dependent on the conventional risk factors like hypertension, diabetes and obesity. However, these conventional risk factors do not completely identify high risk individuals. One major hurdle in the improvement of diagnosis and treatment for CAD is the lack of integration of knowledge from different areas of research like molecular, clinical and drug development. In order to provide comprehensive information from hitherto dispersed data, we developed an integrative knowledgebase called “In-Cardiome or Integrated Cardiome” for all the stake holders in healthcare such as scientists, clinicians and pharmaceutical companies. It is created by integrating 16 different data sources, 995 curated genes classified into 12 different functional categories associated with disease, 1204 completed clinical trials, 12 therapy or drug classifications with 62 approved drugs and drug target networks. This knowledgebase gives the most needed opportunity to understand the disease process and therapeutic impact along with gene expression data from both animal models and patients. The data is classified into three different search categories functional groups, risk factors and therapy/drug based classes. One more unique aspect of In-Cardiome is integration of clinical data of 10,217 subject data from our ongoing Indian Atherosclerosis Research Study (IARS) (6357 unaffected and 3860 CAD affected). IARS data showing demographics and associations of individual and combinations of risk factors in Indian population along with molecular information will enable better translational and drug development research. Database URL www.tri-incardiome.org