Interpretation of Hits

Recommended analysis software

Most screeners use the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program to organize and analyze screening data; some also utilize Spotfire software.

To manipulate compound structures, we recommend the ChemOffice software suite, which includes ChemDraw and ChemFinder. ChemDraw is highly recommended by the ICCB-Longwood chemistry group for drawing structures. If your institution already holds an academic site license for this suite, you should be able to obtain it for free. ChemOffice is only available for Windows-based computers, but a comparable package (ChemDraw Ultra) is available for Macintosh.

SciFinder and Beilstein provide additional and highly useful search capabilities. If you have a PC Windows or Macintosh computer with a Harvard University campus network connection, and you are a current Harvard ID holder, you will be able to download SciFinder and Beilstein from the Harvard Chemistry and Chemical Biology Library Webpage. Although full use of these two programs requires significant chemical expertise, screeners will find it relatively simple to use them to search for commercially available compounds and papers reporting the biological activities of single compounds and their analogs.

ChemNavigator.com: information on compounds and compound structures. Through a collaboration with ChemNavigator, investigators screening at the ICCB-Longwood have access to the ChemNavigator database. This site requires a Netscape browser. Please contact David Wrobel (David_Wrobel"AT"hms.harvard.edu) for login and password information.

Hit2Lead.com supports searches of the ChemBridge collection (420,000 compounds) based on structure, ID number, or compound name. The structure-based search function requires installing plug-ins from MDL and is currently compatible only with Windows. For more information, please see the ChemBridge library pages in the Compound Libraries section.

NCI Developmental Therapy Program: this site provides an overview of the drug discovery and development branch of the National Cancer Institute.

For a tutorial on the use of the PubChem database, please click here. We recommend that you look at "Course Materials" and click on "Essential Exercises" or "PowerTools Exercises" to access the tutorials, a pop-up window will assist you through the steps of each lesson.