circRNA disease: a manually curated database of experimentally supported circRNA-disease associations

Circular RNAs (termed as circRNAs), as a large family of noncoding RNA molecules, have been reported to be transcribed in eukaryotes 1 , 2 . With advances of high-throughput sequencing technologies and bioinformatics methods, a number of circRNAs are identified and related data is accumulating rapidly, including annotation, expression profiles, and biological functions. More recently, lots of studies have revealed that circRNA dysfunctions are associated with a broad range of diseases, including cancers 3 , 4 , neurodegeneration and cerebrovascular diseases 5 . Therefore, circRNAs might be a novel type of potential biomarkers or treatment targets for disease prognosis and therapy. However, a public resource of high-quality curated disease-associated circRNAs remains unavailable. Here, we have developed circRNA disease that provides a user-friendly interface for searching disease-associated circRNAs. The database is freely available at http://cgga.org.cn:9091/circRNADisease/ .