DrugBank 3.0: a comprehensive resource for ‘Omics’ research on drugs

Abstract

DrugBank ( http://www.drugbank.ca) is a richly annotated database of drug and drug target information. It contains extensive data on the nomenclature, ontology, chemistry, structure, function, action, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, metabolism and pharmaceutical properties of both small molecule and large molecule (biotech) drugs. It also contains comprehensive information on the target diseases, proteins, genes and organisms on which these drugs act. First released in 2006, DrugBank has become widely used by pharmacists, medicinal chemists, pharmaceutical researchers, clinicians, educators and the general public. Since its last update in 2008, DrugBank has been greatly expanded through the addition of new drugs, new targets and the inclusion of more than 40 new data fields per drug entry (a 40% increase in data ‘depth’). These data field additions include illustrated drug-action pathways, drug transporter data, drug metabolite data, pharmacogenomic data, adverse drug response data, ADMET data, pharmacokinetic data, computed property data and chemical classification data. DrugBank 3.0 also offers expanded database links, improved search tools for drug–drug and food–drug interaction, new resources for querying and viewing drug pathways and hundreds of new drug entries with detailed patent, pricing and manufacturer data. These additions have been complemented by enhancements to the quality and quantity of existing data, particularly with regard to drug target, drug description and drug action data. DrugBank 3.0 represents the result of 2 years of manual annotation work aimed at making the database much more useful for a wide range of ‘omics’ (i.e. pharmacogenomic, pharmacoproteomic, pharmacometabolomic and even pharmacoeconomic) applications.