The Human OncoBiome Database: A Database of Cancer Microbiome Datasets

Background: The microbiome plays a very important role in many physiological processes including metabolism, inflammation, homeostasis and many biological pathways. Therefore, dysbiosis of the microbiome disrupts these pathways in different ways that may result in causing cancer. There is a complex connection between the microbiome and cancer. The human bodies are continuously exposed to microbial cells, both resident and transient, as well as their byproducts, including toxic metabolites. Objective: To develop the manually curated, searchable and metagenomic resource to facilitate the investigation of Human Cancer microbiota and make it publicly accessible through a web interface which will help further in metagenomic studies. Methods: In HOBD, the information on different cancers (Oral Cancer, Breast Cancer, Liver Cancer, and Colorectal Cancer) has been compiled. The main purpose of creating HOBD was to provide the scientific community with comprehensive information on the species that play a crucial role in various Human Cancers. Result: Over time, this resource will grow to become a unique community resource of human cancer bacteria, providing an extra level of annotation for the analysis of metagenomic datasets. Conclusion: The HOBD site offers easy to use tools for viewing all publicly available Human Cancer microbiota. The freely accessible website is available at http://www.juit.ac.in/hcmd/home.