Database Release 2020.1

Posted on March 12, 2020 by guidetopharmacology — Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce our first database release of 2020 – version 2020.1.

Coronavirus (Covid-19)

We have added a new coronavirus page to the Guide to Pharmacology which aims to consolidate key pharmacological information and resources related to coronavirus. We have gathered information from various sources, with an aim to cover as many of the pharmacological strategies being considered as we could find. Links are provided to the key ligands and target pages in GtoPdb (where data is available). The page also provides other useful links and resource. We will aim to keep this page updated in this fast changing situation.

Tools

GtoPdb contains a couple of useful tools for searching and visualising pharamcology data – that combine data from ChEMBL with GtoPdb data. In this release we’ve update our site to make accessing the visualisation charts easier

Ligand Activity Charts

This tool provides charts with box plots summarising all the activity data for a ligand taken from ChEMBL and GtoPdb across multiple targets and species. Separate charts are created for each target, and where possible the algorithm tries to merge ChEMBL and GtoPdb targets by matching them on name and UniProt accession, for each available species. However, please note that inconsistency in naming of targets may lead to data for the same target being reported across multiple charts.

Previously, access to the charts was only found on a ligand’s summary page, under the biological activity tab. We’ve now moved that link so it appears more prominently on these pages.

We have also added a new icon on the ligand list pages which indicated whether there are activity charts available for the ligand. Click the icon takes the users straight to the charts.

New ‘bar-chart’ icon added to ligand list to indicate availability of activity charts

Publications

We have published a review of the Guide to Immunopharmacology in Immunology at the start of the year. The review provides a deeper context for how the resource can support research into the development of drugs targeted at modulating immune, inflammatory or infectious components of disease.

Harding, S. D., Faccenda, E., Southan, C., Pawson, A. J., Maffia, P., Alexander, S., Davenport, A. P., Fabbro, D., Levi-Schaffer, F., Spedding, M., & Davies, J. A. (2020). The IUPHAR Guide to Immunopharmacology: connecting immunology and pharmacology. Immunology, 10.1111/imm.13175. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/imm.13175

Content Updates

GPCRs:

Ion Channels:

NHRs:

Enzymes and Other Protein Targets:

Guide to Malaria Pharmacology Updates:

3 P. falciparum (3D7) targets have been added to the Antimalarial targets family: PfCLK3, PfPMV and PfNCR1
The Antimalarial ligands family now contains a total of 80 ligands tagged as antimalarial in the database

Other Updates

Updated display of ligand clinical trial data

The ligand summary pages have been updated to improve the display of clinical trials information. Key clinical trials involving the ligand are now displayed in a separate table, under the clinical data tab. The table includes link out the clinical trial plus trial title, type, source, curator comments and references.

Approved drug with primary targets download

A new download file of all approved drugs and their primary targets has been added to the download page.

New out-links

Marine pharmacology – Marine Pharmacology (Midwestern University): a website aimed at those with an interest in the preclinical and clinical pharmacology of marine compounds and the pharmaceutical potential of the enormous biodiversity of organisms present in the world’s oceans
Pharos – Pharos is the user interface to the Knowledge Management Center (KMC) for the Illuminating the Druggable Genome (IDG) program