The DrugBank database is a comprehensive, freely accessible, online database containing information on

drug A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via insufflation (medicine), inhalation, drug i ...

s and drug targets created and maintained by the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

and The Metabolomics Innovation Centre located in

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

, Canada. As both a bioinformatics and a

cheminformatics Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics) refers to the use of physical chemistry theory with computer and information science techniques—so called "'' in silico''" techniques—in application to a range of descriptive and prescriptive ...

resource, DrugBank combines detailed drug (i.e. chemical, pharmacological and pharmaceutical) data with comprehensive drug target (i.e. sequence, structure, and pathway) information. DrugBank has used content from

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

; Wikipedia also often links to Drugbank, posing potential

circular reporting Circular reporting, or false confirmation, is a situation in source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source. In many cases, the problem happens mistaken ...

issues. The DrugBank Online website is available to the public as a free-to-access resource. However, use and re-distribution of content from DrugBank Online or the underlying DrugBank Data, in whole or part, and for any purpose requires a license. Academic users can apply for a free license for certain use cases while all other users require a paid license. The latest release of the database (version 5.0) contains 9591 drug entries including 2037

FDA The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food ...

-approved

small molecule In molecular biology and pharmacology, a small molecule or micromolecule is a low molecular weight (≤ 1000 daltons) organic compound that may regulate a biological process, with a size on the order of 1 nm. Many drugs are small molecules; ...

drugs, 241 FDA-approved biotech (

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

peptide Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. A polypeptide is a longer, continuous, unbranched peptide chain. Polypeptides that have a molecular mass of 10,000 Da or more are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty am ...

) drugs, 96

nutraceuticals Nutraceutical is a terminology evolved scientifically & also through marketing which is used to imply a drug, pharmaceutical effect from plant extracts, compounds, food products which have efficacy and therapeutic influence on clinical outcomes and ...

and over 6000

experimental drug An experimental drug is a medicinal product (a drug or vaccine) that has not yet received drug approval, approval from governmental regulatory agency, regulatory authorities for routine use in human medicine, human or veterinary medicine. A medicin ...

s. Additionally, 4270 non-redundant protein (i.e. drug target/

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

/transporter/carrier) sequences are linked to these drug entries. Each DrugCard entry (Fig. 1) contains more than 200 data fields with half of the information being devoted to drug/chemical data and the other half devoted to drug target or protein data. Four additional databases, HMDB, T3DB, SMPDB and FooDB are also part of a general suite of

metabolomic Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerpri ...

/ cheminformatic databases. HMDB contains equivalent information on more than 40,000 human metabolites, T3DB contains information on 3100 common

toxins A toxin is a naturally occurring poison produced by metabolic activities of living cells or organisms. They occur especially as proteins, often conjugated. The term was first used by organic chemist Ludwig Brieger (1849–1919), derived ...

and environmental

pollutants A pollutant or novel entity is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effect, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. These can be both naturally forming (i.e. minerals or extracted compounds like oi ...

, SMPDB contains pathway diagrams for nearly 700 human

metabolic pathways In biochemistry, a metabolic pathway is a linked series of chemical reactions occurring within a cell. The reactants, products, and intermediates of an enzymatic reaction are known as metabolites, which are modified by a sequence of chemical ...

and disease pathways, while FooDB contains equivalent information on ~28,000 food components and

food additives Food additives are substances added to food to preserve flavor or enhance taste, appearance, or other sensory qualities. Some additives, such as vinegar ( pickling), salt ( salting), smoke (smoking) and sugar (crystallization), have been used for ...

Version history

The first version of DrugBank was released in 2006. This early release contained relatively modest information about 841 FDA-approved small molecule drugs and 113 biotech drugs. It also included information on 2133 drug targets. The second version of DrugBank was released in 2009. This greatly expanded and improved version of the database included 1344 approved small molecule drugs and 123 biotech drugs as well as 3037 unique drug targets. Version 2.0 also included, for the first time,

withdrawn drug Drugs or medicines may be withdrawn from commercial markets because of risks to patients, but also because of commercial reasons (e.g. lack of demand and relatively high production costs) or because it turns out that they are less effective in cli ...

s and

illicit drugs The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances. An area has a prohibition of drugs when its government uses the for ...

, extensive food-drug and drug-drug interactions as well as ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity) parameters. Version 3.0 was released in 2011. This version contained 1424 approved small molecule drugs and 132 biotech drugs as well as >4000 unique drug targets. Version 3.0 also included drug transporter data, drug pathway data, drug pricing, patent and manufacturing data as well as data on >5000 experimental drugs. Version 4.0 was released in 2014. This version included 1558 FDA-approved small molecule drugs, 155 biotech drugs and 4200 unique drug targets. Version 4.0 also incorporated extensive information on drug metabolites (structures and reactions), drug taxonomy, drug spectra, drug

binding constant The binding constant, or affinity constant/association constant, is a special case of the equilibrium constant ''K'', and is the inverse of the dissociation constant. It is associated with the binding and unbinding reaction of receptor (R) and li ...

s and drug synthesis information. Table 1 provides a more complete statistical summary of the history of DrugBank's development.

Scope and access

All data in DrugBank is derived from public non-proprietary sources. Nearly every data item is fully traceable and explicitly referenced to the original source. DrugBank data is available through a public web interface.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Chemical databases Metabolomic databases Human drug metabolites Medical databases

Version history

Scope and access

See also

References