Royan Institute Researchers Develop namiRa, a Comprehensive, Manually Curated Database for microRNA Expression, Function, and Deregulation in Cancer
Researchers at the Royan Institute, in collaboration with the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, have developed namiRa, a comprehensive and specialized database constructed by systematically curating and integrating data from nearly 10,000 scientific publications. By consolidating experimentally validated information on cancer-associated microRNAs (miRNAs), namiRa has emerged as one of the world's most comprehensive resources for investigating the roles of miRNAs in human cancers and is expected to accelerate cancer research, biomarker discovery, and the development of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.According to the Royan Institute Public Relations Office, microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding regulatory RNA molecules that modulate gene expression and play fundamental roles in a wide range of biological processes, including cell proliferation, differentiation, migration, survival, and apoptosis. Aberrant miRNA expression and function have been implicated in the initiation and progression of numerous human malignancies, making these molecules one of the principal focuses of contemporary cancer research and precision oncology.
In this collaborative project, Dr. Sharif Moradi and colleagues at the Royan Institute, together with researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen, developed namiRa (meaning "immortal" in Persian), a manually curated database that provides researchers with integrated, structured, and experimentally validated information on miRNA expression profiles, functional roles, detection methods, validated target genes, and regulatory networks across a broad spectrum of human cancers.
To construct the database, the research team performed a systematic literature review followed by meticulous manual curation of 9,983 eligible scientific publications. This effort enabled the extraction, classification, and integration of experimentally validated data describing the associations between 1,095 human miRNAs and 33 distinct human cancer types. As a result, namiRa has become one of the most comprehensive specialized resources currently available for investigating miRNA-cancer relationships.
Unlike many existing databases that primarily provide basic expression profiles or miRNA-target information, namiRa integrates multiple layers of experimentally validated evidence, including miRNA expression patterns, detection methodologies, functional characterization derived from both in vitro and in vivo studies, validated target genes, and interactive visualization of miRNA regulatory networks. This integrated framework provides researchers with a comprehensive understanding of the roles of miRNAs in cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis, while also facilitating comparative analyses across different cancer types.
According to the investigators, namiRa constitutes a valuable scientific infrastructure that can facilitate the identification of novel cancer biomarkers, accelerate the discovery of therapeutic targets, and support the design of future cancer research. By transforming dispersed experimental findings into a unified, high-quality reference resource, the database also advances data-driven biomedical research and promotes the application of emerging computational technologies in precision medicine.
The study describing namiRa has been published in the international peer-reviewed journal Computers in Biology and Medicine (Elsevier), a leading journal in the fields of computational medicine and biomedical informatics.
The namiRa database is freely available to the global scientific community through an open-access web platform at www.namira-db.com.
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Publish date: 2026/08/05
