DrugBank

The DrugBank database available at the University of Alberta is a bioinformatics and cheminformatics resource that combines detailed drug (i.e. chemical, pharmacological and pharmaceutical) data with comprehensive drug target (i.e. sequence, structure, pathway) information.^[1] The database contains nearly 4800 drug entries including:

• > 1480 FDA-approved small molecule drugs,
• 128 FDA-approved biotech (protein/peptide) drugs,
• > 71 nutraceuticals, and
• > 3200 experimental drugs.^[2]

More than 2500 protein (i.e. drug target, non-redundant) sequences are linked to these drug entries.^[2]

Each DrugCard entry contains more than 100 data fields with half of the information being devoted to drug/chemical data and the other half devoted to drug target or protein data.^{[citation needed]}

It is maintained by David Wishart and Craig Knox.^[1]

Access

Users may query DrugBank in a number of ways:

• Simple text queries of the entire textual component of the database are supported. Clicking on the Browse button generates a tabular synopsis of DrugBank's content. This view allows users to casually scroll through the database or re-sort its contents.
• Clicking on a given DrugCard button brings up the full data content for the corresponding drug. A complete explanation of all the DrugCard fields and sources is given there.
• The PharmaBrowse button allows users to browse through drugs as grouped by their indication. This is particularly useful for pharmacists and physicians, but also for pharmaceutical researchers looking for potential drug leads.
• The ChemQuery button allows users to draw (using the MarvinSketch or ChemSketch applets) or write (as a SMILES string) a chemical compound and to search DrugBank for chemicals similar or identical to the query compound.
• The TextQuery button supports a more sophisticated text search (partial word matches, case sensitive, misspellings, etc.) of the text portion of DrugBank.
• The SeqSearch button allows users to conduct BLASTP (protein) sequence searches of the 18,000 sequences contained in DrugBank. Both single and multiple sequence (i.e. whole proteome) BLAST queries are supported.
• The Data Extractor button opens an easy-to-use relational query search tool that allows users to select or search over various combinations of subfields. The Data Extractor is the most sophisticated search tool for DrugBank.
• Users may download selected text components and sequence data from DrugBank and track the latest DrugBank statistics by clicking on the Download button.

See also

• chemexper
• ChemSpider
• eMolecules
• PubChem
• Therapeutic Targets Database

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Wishart DS, Knox C, Guo AC, et al. (2008). "DrugBank: a knowledgebase for drugs, drug actions and drug targets". Nucleic Acids Research 36 (Database issue): D901–6. doi:10.1093/nar/gkm958. PMC 2238889. PMID 18048412. http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=18048412. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Wishart DS, Knox C, Guo AC, et al. (2006). "DrugBank: a comprehensive resource for in silico drug discovery and exploration". Nucleic Acids Research 34 (Database issue): D668–D672. doi:10.1093/nar/gkj067. PMC 1347430. PMID 16381955. http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/34/suppl_1/D668. 

External links

• DrugBank website