The National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium (NNTC) Database: An integrated database for HIV-related studies

Abstract

We herein present the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium-Data Coordinating Center (NNTC-DCC) database, which is the only available database for neuroAIDS studies that contains data in an integrated, standardized form. This database has been created in conjunction with the NNTC, which provides human tissue and biofluid samples to individual researchers to conduct studies focused on neuroAIDS. The database contains experimental datasets from 1206 subjects for the following categories (which are further broken down into subcategories): gene expression, genotype, proteins, endo-exo-chemicals, morphometrics and other (miscellaneous) data. The database also contains a wide variety of downloadable data and metadata for 95 HIV-related studies covering 170 assays from 61 principal investigators. The data represent 76 tissue types, 25 measurement types, and 38 technology types, and reaches a total of 33 017 407 data points. We used the ISA platform to create the database and develop a searchable web interface for querying the data. A gene search tool is also available, which searches for NCBI GEO datasets associated with selected genes. The database is manually curated with many user-friendly features, and is cross-linked to the NCBI, HUGO and PubMed databases. A free registration is required for qualified users to access the database.