NCATS Pharmaceutical Collection
The NCATS Pharmaceutical Collection (NPC), also known as the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) Pharmaceutical Collection, is a comprehensive, publicly accessible collection of approved and investigational molecular entities for high-throughput screening that provides a valuable resource for both validating new models of disease and better understanding the molecular basis of disease pathology and intervention. The NPC already has generated several useful probes for studying a diverse cross section of biology, including novel targets and pathways.
NCATS provides access to its set of approved drugs and bioactives through the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program and as part of the compound collection for the Tox21 Initiative, a collaborative effort for toxicity screening among several government agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Toxicology Program (NTP), and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Of the nearly 2,750 small molecular entities that have been approved for clinical use by U.S., European Union, Japanese and Canadian authorities and that are amenable to high-throughput screening, NCATS currently possesses 2,500, as well as about 1,000 additional investigational molecular entities, as part of its screening collection. Obtaining an authoritative listing of approved molecular entities was surprisingly difficult. Once obtained, the list was reduced to a nonredundant set of molecular entities compatible with high-throughput screening for sourcing.
The current collection was sourced from a combination of traditional chemical suppliers, specialty collections, pharmacies and custom synthesis. All data generated through this effort will be deposited without restriction into PubChem, including the full concentration-response profile of each compound in each assay. Detailed information on the sourcing of this collection including regulatory status, supplier information, compound structures, target information and indication will be made available as time permits. As this initial phase of building a definitive set of pharmaceutical compounds is completed, the collection will expand to include other compounds which target novel diseases, pathways and classes of proteins in addition to active metabolites of known drugs.
Software
A dedicated browser with searching and exporting capabilities provides electronic access to NPC content. The browser is still early in its development cycle. NCATS plans to make regular updates to the browser to improve features and content. The latest version of the NPC browser for various platforms can be downloaded from http://tripod.nih.gov/npc.
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