PR94346

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 1, 2022 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform(TM) redefines its role in drug discovery with

the inclusion of unique biosequence data collection and capabilities

CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society specializing in scientific

information solutions, announces the launch of a major expansion of the CAS

SciFinder Discovery Platform into life sciences. The enhanced platform includes

over 2 million modified biosequences, 60 years of patent literature, and one of

the largest collections of journal information including PubMed's biomedical

and life science data.

"The past decade has shown huge progress in biologic drug discovery. Research

in oncology and inflammatory diseases is showing great promise, and more

recently we have seen the first approved mRNA vaccines for COVID-19. As R&D

increasingly relies on quality data to expedite discovery, a key challenge

facing biomedical researchers is harnessing vast amounts of sequence data

spread across thousands of sources," says CAS President Manuel Guzman. "This

significant expansion of the CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform underscores our

commitment to life sciences by providing molecular biology researchers the

high-quality information that chemists have relied on CAS for over the last 110

years."

The CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform expansion unlocks human-indexed insights

from journals and patents in over 50 languages dating back to 1957 and 70

million biosequences curated by CAS scientists. The collection also includes

unique biosequences not found elsewhere in electronic resources.

"We are excited to bring this enhanced content collection to molecular

biologists along with the powerful search and data visualization capabilities

SciFinder has long been known for," says CAS Chief Product Officer Tim

Wahlberg. "This is an important step forward for our work in life sciences and

is designed specifically to solve problems that researchers face every day."

The launch is the culmination of an 18-month effort to curate over 600 million

additional proteins and nucleotides and integrate BLAST (Basic Local Alignment

Search Tool), CDR (Complementarity-Determining Regions) for antibody and T-cell

receptors, and motif search capabilities into the platform.

"Creating a single platform that integrates biosequence and small-molecule

searching meant bringing together the best scientific and technical minds

available. We took what we call a 'synthetic-organic' approach which we believe

greatly enhances the scientific workflow, particularly if you are starting a

research journey from a sequence," says CAS Product Management Director Adam

Sanford. "Our goal was to create the most meaningful and intuitive user

experience possible, while allowing molecular biologists to collaborate

seamlessly with chemists. The result is a platform designed by scientists for

scientists, which we see as a powerful component in drug discovery."

The enhanced SciFinder Discovery Platform [

https://www.cas.org/solutions/cas-scifinder-discovery-platform/cas-scifinder/biologics-research

]  is available now.

About CAS: CAS is a leader in scientific information solutions, partnering with

innovators around the world to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. CAS employs

over 1,400 experts who curate, connect, and analyze scientific knowledge to

reveal unseen connections. For over 100 years, scientists, patent

professionals, and business leaders have relied on CAS solutions and expertise

to provide the hindsight, insight, and foresight they need so they can build

upon the learnings of the past to discover a better future. CAS is a division

of the American Chemical Society. Connect with us at cas.org [

http://www.cas.org/ ].

About CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform(TM): CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform

leverages the largest curated source of scientific information in the world,

uniting task-specific solutions including CAS SciFindern, CAS Formulus(R), and

CAS Analytical Methods(TM). The CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform supports

multifaceted scientific research such as retrosynthetic planning, formulation

design, testing-related methods research, and biosequence searching to

accelerate breakthroughs at every step of the innovation journey. Learn more at

cas.org/cas-solutions [ http://www.cas.org/cas-solutions ].

Contact: Tina Tomeo, cas-pr@cas.org, +1 614.447.3731

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Source: CAS