TaxKB: a knowledge base for new taxane-related drug discovery.

Background: Taxanes are naturally occurring compounds which belong to a powerful group of chemotherapeutic drugs with anticancer properties. Their current use, clinical efficacy, and unique mechanism of action indicate their potentiality for cancer drug discovery and development thereby promising to reduce the high economy associated with cancer worldwide. Extensive research has been carried out on taxanes with the aim to combat issues of drug resistance, side effects, limited natural supply, and also to increase the therapeutic index of these molecules.

HDACiDB: a database for histone deacetylase inhibitors.

An histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor database (HDACiDB) was constructed to enable rapid access to data relevant to the development of epigenetic modulators (HDAC inhibitors [HDACi]), helping bring precision cancer medicine a step closer. Thousands of HDACi targeting HDACs are in various stages of development and are being tested in clinical trials as monotherapy and in combination with other cancer agents. Despite the abundance of HDACi, information resources are limited.

Bioinformatics in crosslinking chemistry of collagen with selective cross linkers.

Background: Identifying the molecular interactions using bioinformatics tools before venturing into wet lab studies saves the energy and time considerably. The present study summarizes, molecular interactions and binding energy calculations made for major structural protein, collagen of Type I and Type III with the chosen cross-linkers, namely, coenzyme Q10, dopaquinone, embelin, embelin complex-1 & 2, idebenone, 5-O-methyl embelin, potassium embelate and vilangin.

Results: Molecular descriptive analyses suggest, dopaquinone, embelin, idebenone, 5-O-methyl embelin, and potassium embelate display nil violations.