title: The design and development of an integrated natural products screening database.
abstract: We designed and developed NEXUS--a new natural products screening database and related suite of software applications--to utilize the spectacular increases in assay capacity of the modern high throughput screening (HTS) environment. NEXUS not only supports seamless integration with separate HTS systems, but supports user-customized integration with external laboratory automation, particularly sample preparation systems. Designed and developed based on a detailed process model for natural products drug discovery, NEXUS comprises two integrated parts: (1) a single schema of Oracle tables and callable procedures and functions, and (2) software "front-ends" to the database developed using Microsoft Excel and Oracle Discovery/2000. Many of the back-end processing functions were written in Programming Language/Structured Query Language (PL/SQL) to provide an Application Programmer's Interface, which allows end users to create custom applications with little input from information technology professionals.
authors.affiliation: Merck Research Laboratories, Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ 07065-0900, USA. Tom_Holt@Merck.com
authors.forename: T G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dufresne
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Liesch
authors.forename: G K
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Mallow
mesh_terms: D001688:Biological Products; D003196:Computer Graphics; D019992:Databases as Topic; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008962:Models, Theoretical
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products