Blog Archives

New Cymdeithas Ddysgedig Cymru / Learned Society of Wales Fellows

We wish to offer our congratulations to Professor Jamie Davies, Professor of Experimental Anatomy, University of Edinburgh, who has been elected to the Cymdeithas Ddysgedig Cymru/Learned Society of Wales. The society’s new Fellows include academics from across Welsh and UK

Posted in Guide to Immunopharmacology, Uncategorized

Hidden REF award to Guide to Pharmacology

It is with great pleasure that we can announce that the  IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY has been given a hidden REF award in the category ‘applications of research’. The hidden Ref (https://hidden-ref.org) is a national ‘competition’, supported by publishers, learned

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GtoPdb pre-release ligands (2021.1)

These are some of the ligands under curation (pre-release) in the Guide to Pharmacology. We expect them to be available on the website at the next database release (2021.1). Ligand ID: 11395Names: MK-7110Comment: MK-7110 (originally OncoImmune’s CD24Fc) is a synthetic

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Hot Topics: Rise up against statistical significance, probably.

A recent commentary in Nature has the provocative title “Retire Statistical Significance” (1, with a list of more than 800 signatories) and has been widely interpreted as a call for the entire concept of statistical significance to be abandoned. Closer

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Posted in Hot Topics, Uncategorized

Commentary on the distinction between Cannabis and cannabinoids

The Cannabis plant is a natural product from which more than 100 apparently unique metabolites (cannabinoids) have been identified. Many of these have been found in human plasma following consumption of Cannabis preparations. The most well-recognised is tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, because

Posted in Hot Topics, Uncategorized

GtoPdb: Database Status Reports

As some of our contacts may know, we hold hemi-annual meetings between IUPHAR, BPS the GtoPdb team, together with invited guests from our collaborators and NC-IUPHAR committee representatives. Covering ~ 2.5 days these usually take place in Paris or Edinburgh.

Posted in Database updates, Technical, Uncategorized

PubMed Commons and Altmetrics

This has been split from an updated older post on Citation profiles for our NAR and Concise Guide papers  and this section will be updated soon PubMed Commons In addition to keeping an eye on citations per se we also

Posted in Uncategorized

Impact statements and content subsumation: BPS 2017 follow-up

We were pleased to catch up with many GtoPdb/GtoImmuPdb users, aficionados, friends and affiliates at the BPS Pharmacology 2017  in the QEII Center in London.  You can find our presentations and posters on Slideshare.  Associated with this presence we have

Posted in Uncategorized

Anti-infective pilot entries

GtoPdb has been traditionally focused on the pharmacology associated with human diseases (i.e. we have not been funded to cover anti-infectives).  In 2017 we have been exploring possible funding opportunities to extend into  expert curation of anti-infectives, particularly in the

Posted in Uncategorized

GtoPdb Ligands in PubChem

GtoPdb and  its precursor IUPHAR-DB have been capturing the structures of pharmacologically relevant ligands since 2005.  The fig.1. snapshot below  shows the approved drug section of our eight-category ligand classification As an active collaboration with the  PubChem team, we have

Posted in Uncategorized

Why Data Citation Is a Computational Problem

By Peter Buneman The database development team encouraged me to write this off-topic blog on data citation, as it may be of interest to people involved with the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology (GtoPdb). It must be almost ten years ago

Posted in Uncategorized

Recent DrugBank Changes

The DrugBank database has just announced (09 May 2016) more restrictive access conditions including user registration. Not unexpectedly, this has prompted discussion on Twitter and elsewhere (e.g. ThinkLab. including some from the DrugBank team).  We enjoy long-standing contacts with the

Posted in Uncategorized

Assessment of GtoPdb in-links

A valuable aspect of biological databases in general and the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (GtoPdb) in particular, are out-links to and in-links from, other relevant resources.

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Curating PDB links between proteins and 3D chemical structures

We know users find our curated PDB links of high value, particularly where the ligand co-crystalised within the target protein is an activity-mapped approved drug, clinical candidate or key metabolite. The comparative SAR insights these can provide are substantial, especially

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The drug class of 2014

Around this time of year there is much interest and comment from the pundits concerning the previous year’s drug approvals. Team member Chris Southan has a history of picking out aspects of the PubChem entries on his own blog and

Posted in Uncategorized

Our upcoming release

As we approach our 2014.3 release in a few weeks time the curation team are busy adding and updating records. This includes a round of inputs an revisions from our protein family committees and a new FAQ. Just to remind

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NC-IUPHAR newsletter Summer 2014

The latest edition of our newsletter can be read at the link below: NC-IUPHAR_Newsletter_Summer_2014 Special features covered in this issue include: A detailed profile of the PubChem database contributed by their lead scientist Evan Bolton, with whom we have worked

Posted in Uncategorized

BPS awards JR Vane Medal to Professor Tony Harmar

The British Pharmacological Society today announced the winners of several of their 2014 awards and prizes. Among these awards is the JR Vane Medal which has been awarded posthumously to Professor Tony Harmar. This award reflects the tremendous contribution Tony

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