NIH Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative

NIH Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative and the PubChem Database... 

It is a component of the NIH s Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative, http // pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 

As an essential component of NIH s Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative, PubChem is the largest chemical database in the public domain. As of October 2007 it contains 19 600000 substance records for the Substance database and 10 900 000 unique compound records for the Compound database, with links to bioassay description, literature, references, and assay data for each entry. Its BioAssay Database provides searchable descriptions of nearly 600 bioassays, including descriptions of the conditions and readouts specific to a screening protocol. 

The NIH has set up a consortium called the Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network (MLSCN), which performs HTS on assays provided by the research community. It currently has more than 100,000 chemically diverse compounds. This is an initiative of the Molecular Libraries Roadmap, which also has another two components Cheminformatics and Technology Development. The aim is to generate a comprehensive database of chemical compounds and their bioactivities to enhance the capability for the development of new drug entities. 

Lazo, J.S. 2006. Roadmap or roadkill a pharmacologist s analysis of the NIH Molecular Libraries Initiative. Mol. Interv. 6, 240-243. 

It is only in the past 5 years or so that chemical probe development has really taken off. This has largely been driven by the NIH roadmap initiative which engaged a network (Molecnlar Libraries Probe Production Centers Network http //mli.nih.gov/mli/ mlpcn/mlpcn/) of academic-based centers that provided state-of-the-art high-throughput screening (HTS) capabilities of a large diverse small-molecule library (the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (MLSMR) >350,000 compounds) as well as much expertise in the activities of assay development and downstream hit to probe (http //mli.nih.gov/mli/). Prior to this initiative, HTS was almost exclusively conducted within pharmacentical... 

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