Chemical structure searching: taking it to the next level

Chemical structure searching can be challenging. The most common question in a searcher's mind is, "is my search comprehensive?" What he least wishes to hear from a client is, "why did you miss this?" This article will discuss ways of expanding the scope of structure searches conducted in the pharmaceutical industry. Patent offices commonly search a broad 'core' structure in the context of a drug indication (e.g., thyroid cancer) or a drug's mechanism of action (e.g., PDE5 inhibitors). Other approaches include patent citation searching of relevant references, the use of pharmaceutical pipeline databases and inventor/assignee-based searches. During analysis of the results, it can be useful for an analyst to include such references in the report (e.g., as 'reference of possible interest'), while also indicating which techniques were used to retrieve them. Regardless of whether these additional search techniques provide further relevant references, the search report is still more comprehensive and, therefore, less likely to omit relevant art.