The ChEMBL-og

World Malaria Day for 2011 is on April 25th again this year - see the worldmalariaday website for more details. Also look at the ChEMBL-NTD website for some relevant data from the ChEMBL resources.

Registration is now open on the LinkedIn ChEMBL User Group page for our first meeting. If you are not on LinkedIn and would still like to come, please mail me . To parents of young children the world over (in 175 territories in fact) the image above will be too familiar.

ATC code:L01XC11 On 25th March 2011, the FDA approved Ipilimumab (trade name  Yervoy TM , ATC code:L01XC11), a human cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4)-blocking antibody indicated for the treatment of unresectable or  metastatic  melanoma. ( Melanoma ;  CRUK melanoma ; OMIM:  155600 ; ICD:  C43 ). Malignant melanoma is diagnosed in an estimated 160,000 new patients each year and, despite being less common than other skin neoplasms, it is responsible for 75% of skin cancer-related deaths. Current available treatment options for melanoma are limited to surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, although there are a number of targetted agents in the clinical development at the moment. Ipilimumab effect in melanoma is indirect and probably due to enabling a T-cell mediated immune response In a randomised clinical study that assessed the response of unresectable or metastatic melanoma patients to Ipilimumab, alone and in combination with...

This Network will establish an Academia-Users Network in Chemical Biology to initiate, establish and nurture collaborative projects for the advancement of the drug discovery process. It aims to expand the capability of UK drug discovery, with new drug targets, new tools to validate targets and new multidisciplinary partnerships to explore the platforms, tools and targets of the future. A poster for this new network is above, but a website is being set-up for this, and as soon as it is ready to go, we'll provide links on the ChEMBL-og. The network is funded by the  EPSRC ,  BBSRC  and  MRC , funded through their joint “Collaborative Networks in Chemical Biology” initiative.

There's a great looking conference in Budapest this August, the 4th European Conference on Chemistry for Life Sciences (4ECCLS) - a link to the conference website is  http://www.4eccls.mke.org.hu/

There is an excellent description of specific subtypes of monoclonal antibodies on Wikipedia, these can be easily incorporated into the Drug_Class section of our drug taxonomy. Specifically as Drug_Type_Subsubclass. An interesting property of this classification is that it should be possible to write an algorithm that classifies arbitrary sequences against this taxonomy. mab - whole monoclonal antibody. Fab - fragment, antigen-binding (one arm). F(ab')2 - fragment, antigen-binding, including hinge region (both arms). Fab' - fragment, antigen-binding, including hinge region (one arm). scFv - single-chain variable fragment. di-scFv - dimeric single-chain variable fragment. sdAb - single-domain antibody. 3funct - trifunctional antibody. BiTE - bi-specific T-cell engager. Other - an antibody like drug that does not fit one of the above classes.

We now have an immediately available position within the ChEMBL group for an exciting project looking at data integration of ADMET data alongside structural and comparative genomics data. This role requires good general bioinformatics knowledge, programming in perl (or equivalent), knowledge of SQL, and database querying and data integration. Previous experience with ADMET data would be beneficial. More details are  available on request .