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SureChEMBL in 2026: Our Latest Publication in Nucleic Acids Research

We are pleased to announce the publication of our latest SureChEMBL paper, " SureChEMBL in 2026: an open database of chemical and biomedical annotations from the patent literature ", in Nucleic Acids Research . The paper presents a major redesign of SureChEMBL , including modernised infrastructure, improved chemical extraction and standardisation workflows, and new biomedical annotations that connect patent chemistry to genes, proteins, diseases and mechanisms. The updated resource provides open access to 122 million patents, 44 million chemically annotated documents, 31 million chemical structures and 1 million biomedical entity annotations. Abstract The patent literature is a major source of scientific and technical information for drug discovery, often disclosing chemical structures, biological targets, therapeutic indications, and structure-activity relationships before they appear in the scientific literature. However, patent documents are difficult to analyse at scale b...
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New SureChEMBL Interface and APIs

We are excited to announce that the new SureChEMBL's beta version is now out and can be accessed at: https://www.surechembl.org/beta/ We’d love for you to try our new web interface and share your feedback. As we gradually move to the new web interface and APIs, we’re aiming to complete the transition by the end of 2026. If you use our APIs, we encourage you to start exploring the new versions too. Please let us know if you have any questions or need help getting started. What’s Changing The new web interface, currently in beta, is live at https://www.surechembl.org/beta/ and will replace the current interface. Please migrate to our new REST APIs as old APIs would be discontinued after the release. SureChEMBL downloads continue to be available via FTP at https://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/chembl/SureChEMBL/bulk_data/ Web Interface SureChEMBL’s web interface has been redesigned using Nuxt 3 to improve the user experience and support asynchronous annotation using LeadMine. It’s c...

Open Position: Scientific Developer

The Chemical Biology Resources Team at the European Bioinformatics Institute ( EMBL-EBI ) is looking for a Scientific Developer with an interest in biomedical knowledge extraction to join a team developing a drug side effect resource.   For more information, and to apply, click here . This is an exciting opportunity to join a multi-disciplinary team on a project to develop a comprehensive open source side effect resource for the scientific and pharmaceutical community, and provide structured and standardised training sets for AI/ML applications to improve early identification of safety liabilities.       Your role will focus on developing and implementing machine learning and data processing pipelines for the extraction of safety data. The position provides a real opportunity to make a significant impact on a critical problem in drug discovery for the many users of the Open Targets Platform and ChEMBL . This position is situated with...

Introducing 3D Conformers on ChEMBL Compound Pages

We're excited to announce a new feature on ChEMBL compound pages: an interactive 3D viewer showing a low-energy, quantum-mechanically informed conformer for each compound, wherever one is available. This is part of a collaboration with the Isayev Lab at Carnegie Mellon University who have developed ChEMBL3D. Until now, ChEMBL compound pages have shown molecules as flat 2D structures. A 2D depiction is great for seeing connectivity, but it says nothing about a molecule's actual shape in three dimensions, and shape is often what determines whether a compound fits a binding pocket, how it interacts with a target, or how its stereochemistry affects potency. With this release, you can rotate, zoom, and explore a real 3D conformer directly on the compound page, view it alongside the familiar 2D structure, and download the coordinates as an SDF file. The 2D and 3D visualization options in ChEMBL for the sample molecu le Imatinib (CHEMBL941),   https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/explore...

ChEMBL interface user experience updates

Thank you to everyone who has shared feedback with us through our UX studies and conversations with the ChEMBL team. Your input has helped us understand what’s working well, what could be smoother, and where small changes could make a big difference. Based on that feedback, we’ve made a few updates to the ChEMBL web interface that we hope will make browsing, searching, filtering, and exploring data a little easier. We’d love for you to try them out and let us know what you think. Filters that stay with you The filters panel is now sticky, so it stays visible while you scroll through results. This should make it easier to refine searches without having to jump back up the page. We’ve also updated the histogram-style filters so the bars include counts directly inside them, making it easier to scan the available values at a glance. And when a filter section has more options available, there is now a “See all” button so you can expand the full list of facets. Histogram filters before and ...

Open Position: Biological Curator

  The Chemical Biology Resources Team at the European Bioinformatics Institute ( EMBL-EBI ) is looking for a talented Scientist with a flair for data curation to be responsible for the quality of bioactivity and drug discovery data in the ChEMBL database . ChEMBL is a world-leading chemogenomics resource, providing open bioactivity data and associated tools to the scientific community. ChEMBL is widely used through both academia and industry to support drug discovery. You will work in a team-oriented environment, collaborating closely with fellow scientists and technical experts, chemo- and bio-informaticians and software engineers across EMBL-EBI and with our many external partners from the UK and internationally. Applicants may be from anywhere in the world (visa support and relocation allowance); also note that the quoted salary is tax free and so is equivalent to the net salary from another job.   For more information, and to apply, click HERE !     Your role ...

Open Position: Chemistry Curator

We are looking for a talented scientist with a flair for data curation to be responsible for the quality of chemical and associated data in the ChEBI database . In this role, you will contribute to maintaining the quality and integrity of the ChEBI database and ontology through the curation of chemical structures, coordination of data releases, and collaboration with the global scientific community. If you have a background in chemistry or biochemistry and are passionate about open-access scientific data, we would be delighted to hear from you. Applicants may be from anywhere in the world (visa support and relocation allowance); also note that the quoted salary is tax free and so is equivalent to the net salary from another job. For more information, and to apply, click HERE !   Duties & responsibilities    You will be responsible for the curation of chemical data in the ChEBI database. Reporting to the Chemical Biology Services team leader, the job responsi...