Exploration tools for drug discovery and beyond: applying SciFinder to interdisciplinary research

Chemists have long recognized the value of online databases for surveying the literature of their field. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) databases covering almost a century's worth of journal articles and patent documents are among the best known and widely used for searching information on compounds. Today's research presents a new challenge, however, as the boundaries of chemistry and biological sciences overlap increasingly. This trend is especially true in the drug discovery field where published findings relating to both chemical and biological entities and their interactions are examined. CAS has expanded its resources to meet the requirements of the new, interdisciplinary challenges faced by today's researchers. This is evident both in the content of CAS databases, which have been expanded to include more biology-related information, and in the technology of the search tools now available to researchers on their desktop. It is the integration of content and search-and-retrieval technology that enables new insights to be made in the vast body of accumulated information. CAS's SciFinder is a widely used research tool for this purpose.