Institute collection and analysis of Nanobodies (iCAN): a comprehensive database and analysis platform for nanobodies

BACKGROUND: Nanobodies are single-domain antibodies that contain the unique structural and functional properties of naturally-occurring heavy chain in camelidae. As a novel class of antibody, they show many advantages compared with traditional antibodies such as smaller size, higher stability, improved specificity, more easily expressed in microorganisms. These unusual hallmarks make them as promising tools in basic research and clinical practice. Although thousands of nanobodies are known to be published, no single database provides searchable, unified annotation and integrative analysis tools for these various nanobodies. RESULTS: Here, we present the database of Institute Collection and Analysis of Nanobodies (iCAN). It is built for the aim that addressing the above gap to expand and accelerate the nanobody research. iCAN, as the first database of nanobody, contains the most comprehensive information to date on nanobodies and related antigens. So far, iCAN incorporates 2391 entries which include 2131 from patents and 260 from publications and provides a simple user interface for researchers to retrieve and view the detailed information of nanobodies. In addition to the data collection, iCAN also provides online bioinformatic tools for sequence analysis and characteristic feature extraction. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, iCAN enables researchers to analyze nanobody features and explore the applications of nanobodies more efficiently. iCAN is freely available at http://ican.ils.seu.edu.cn. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-017-4204-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.