caNanoLab – A Tool To Benefit Biomedical Nanomaterials Research

The cancer Nanotechnology Laboratory Web portal ("http://cananolab.nci.nih.gov/caNanoLab/welcome.do":http://cananolab.nci.nih.gov/caNanoLab/welcome.do) is designed to promote sharing of nanomedicine data and to provide support for the annotation of nanoparticles with information about their composition, function, and characterization. The project is a part of NCI cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG®), and includes a collaboration among the NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT), the NCI Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL), and the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology.Currently, caNanolab contains nanomaterial data of 765 "public" samples. 18 samples were contributed by National Characterization Lab (USA), while the remaining 747 were submitted by a curator at Washington University in St. Louis from 114 publications. The curated samples include simple nanoparticles, such as emulsions, metal oxides, nanohorns, nanorods, polymers, quantum dots, as well as complex particles, such as dendriworms, which are conjugates of crosslinked dextran-coated iron oxide particles and dendrimers. Data submission involves curation of sample composing elements, their function (imaging, targeting, therapeutic), physico-chemical (size, molecular weight, surface/zeta potential, etc.) properties, and in vitro (cytotoxicity, blood contact,targeting/gene expression, etc.) characterizations, based on information provided in corresponding publications or obtained from the authors.caNanoLab also contributes to and utilizes resources of NanoParticle Ontology("http://www.nano-ontology.org":http://www.nano-ontology.org).