摘要：Preterm birth, or the delivery of an infant prior to 37 weeks of gestation, is a significant cause of infantmorbidity and mortality. In the last decade, the advent and continued development of molecular profilingtechnologies has enabled researchers to generate vast amount of ‘omics’ data, which together withintegrative computational approaches, can help refine the current knowledge about disease mechanisms,diagnostics, and therapeutics. Here we describe the March of Dimes’ Database for Preterm Birth Research(http://www.immport.org/resources/mod), a unique resource that contains a variety of ‘omics’ datasetsrelated to preterm birth. The database is open publicly, and as of January 2018, links 13 molecular studieswith data across tens of thousands of patients from 6 measurement modalities. The data in the repositoryare highly diverse and include genomic, transcriptomic, immunological, and microbiome data. Relevantdatasets are augmented with additional molecular characterizations of almost 25,000 biological samplesfrom public databases. We believe our data-sharing efforts will lead to enhanced research collaborationsand coordination accelerating the overall pace of discovery in preterm birth research.
