What is Max Phase in ChEMBL?

ChEMBL contains information on drugs that have been approved for treatment of a specific disease / diagnosis (an indication) within a region of the world (e.g. FDA drugs are approved for use in the United States), and clinical candidate drugs that are being investigated for an indication during the clinical trials process.

The maximum phase of development for the compound across all indications is assigned a category called 'max_phase' (the value in brackets is used in the downloadable ChEMBL database in the 'molecule_dictionary' table):

Approved (4): A marketed drug e.g. AMINOPHYLLINE (CHEMBL1370561) is an FDA approved drug for treatment of asthma.
Phase 3 (3): A clinical candidate drug in Phase 3 Clinical Trials e.g. TEGOPRAZAN (CHEMBL4297583) is under clinical investigation for treatment of peptic ulcer at Phase 3, and also liver disease at Phase 1.
Phase 2 (2): A clinical candidate drug in Phase 2 Clinical Trials e.g. NEVANIMIBE HYDROCHLORIDE (CHEMBL542103) is under clinical investigation for treatment of Cushing syndrome at Phase 2. Note that this category also includes a small number of trials that are defined by ClinicalTrials.gov as "Phase 2/Phase 3".
Phase 1 (1): A clinical candidate drug in Phase 1 Clinical Trials e.g. SALCAPROZATE SODIUM (CHEMBL2107027) is under clinical investigation for treatment of diabetes mellitus. Note that this category also includes a small number of trials that are defined by ClinicalTrials.gov as "Phase 1/Phase 2".
Early Phase 1 (0.5): A clinical candidate drug in Early Phase 1 Clinical Trials e.g. CITRULLINE MALATE (CHEMBL4297667) is under clinical investigation for coronary artery disease at Early Phase 1.
Unknown (-1): Clinical Phase unknown for drug or clinical candidate drug ie where ChEMBL cannot assign a clinical phase e.g. NALIDIXATE SODIUM (CHEMBL1255939) is known to be a clinical candidate drug because it has a USAN name, however ChEMBL has not been able to map a disease indication for this compound via its clinical trials pipeline and therefore its max_phase is assigned as Unknown. By contrast, the parent compound (NALIDIXIC ACID, CHEMBL5) is an approved drug for treatment of bacterial disease.
Preclinical (NULL): preclinical compounds with bioactivity data e.g. CHEMBL6300 is a preclinical compound with bioactivity data that has usually been extracted from scientific literature. However, the sources of drug and clinical candidate drug information in ChEMBL do not show that this compound has reached clinical trials and therefore the max_phase is set to null.

By contrast, the 'max_phase_for_ind' field in the 'drug_indication' table in the downloadable ChEMBL database contains the maximum phase of development for the drug or clinical candidate drug for a specified indication. The numbering system remains identical to that described above for max_phase.

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