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Informatics

The ABCD of data management

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 6, pages 956–957 (2007)Cite this article

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Recognizing that the key to the success of ABCD would be the ability of users to pose relevant questions and effectively visualize and analyse structure–activity relationships, the authors set out to design a system that would address three major goals. The first was to establish a unifying framework for organizing chemical and biological data, the second was to provide a single application suite and interface to replace the multitude used previously across J&JPRD, and the third was to create a collaborative framework to support the project-team-based structure of J&JPRD.

To meet these goals, the authors chose a data warehouse strategy, in which all data — initially in vitro data from multiple diverse sources in this case — is transformed into the appropriate format for an integrated repository and then uploaded. Crucial to the success of this effort is the use of a common, universally accepted ontology and the harmonization of the huge diversity of legacy data. Having all the data present available in a single system when a query is posed helps to optimize the performance of search tools, and the repository is updated every 24 hours to incorporate new data or modifications to existing data.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Agrafiotis, D. K. et al. Advanced Biological and Chemical Discovery (ABCD): centralizing discovery knowledge in an inherently decentralized world. J. Chem. Inf. Model. 47, 1999–2014 (2007)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Agrafiotis, D. K. et al. SAR maps: A new SAR visualization technique for medicinal chemists. J. Med. Chem. 25 Oct 2007 (doi: 10.1021/jm070845m)

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Authors
  1. Peter Kirkpatrick
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Kirkpatrick, P. The ABCD of data management. Nat Rev Drug Discov 6, 956–957 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd2471

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