Commercial reagents, databases

This section will describe examples of a variety of different types of 2D and 3D chemical structure databases and data collections. These range from comprehensive collections of small organic molecules (CAS registry file and Beilstein), to specialized collections of analytically derived 3D structures (CSD and PDB), to commercial reagent catalogs (ACD), to prospective and actual pharmaceutical entities (MDDR, NCI, and the typical corporate pharmaceutical database). Access to all but proprietary collections is available for a fee. For additional information, see also Online Databases in Chemistry. 

Today, nearly every important reagent or method reported in the literature has a patent or patent application associated with it, especially if it has potential commercial value. A search of the patent databases, such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office (http //www. uspto.gov/) or the European Patent Office (http //ep.espacenet.com/) for key words or the potential names of inventors can provide a list of any existing issued patents or patent applications related to a bioconjugate technique or compound. In addition, a fee-based service such as Delphion is particularly effective at finding patents related to any subject matter (http //www. delphion.com/). 

For a rapid library synthesis, the building blocks used in the synthesis should be commercially available or readily accessible. The selection of reagents can be facilitated by search of chemical databases such as ACD. ... 

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