title: TaxKB: a knowledge base for new taxane-related drug discovery.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Taxanes are naturally occurring compounds which belong to a powerful group of chemotherapeutic drugs with anticancer properties. Their current use, clinical efficacy, and unique mechanism of action indicate their potentiality for cancer drug discovery and development thereby promising to reduce the high economy associated with cancer worldwide. Extensive research has been carried out on taxanes with the aim to combat issues of drug resistance, side effects, limited natural supply, and also to increase the therapeutic index of these molecules. These efforts have led to the isolation of many naturally occurring compounds belonging to this family (more than 350 different kinds), and the synthesis of semisynthetic analogs of the naturally existing molecules (>500), and has also led to the characterization of many (>1000) of them. A web-based database system on clinically exploitable taxanes, providing a link between the structure and the pharmacological property of these molecules could help to reduce the druggability gap for these molecules.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Taxane knowledge base (TaxKB, http://bioinfo.au-kbc.org.in/taxane/Taxkb/), is an online multi-tier relational database that currently holds data on 42 parameters of 250 natural and 503 semisynthetic analogs of taxanes. This database provides researchers with much-needed information necessary for drug development. TaxKB enables the user to search data on the structure, drug-likeness, and physicochemical properties of both natural and synthetic taxanes with a "General Search" option in addition to a "Parameter Specific Search." It displays 2D structure and allows the user to download the 3D structure (a PDB file) of taxanes that can be viewed with any molecular visualization tool. The ultimate aim of TaxKB is to provide information on Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, and Excretion/Toxicity (ADME/T) as well as data on bioavailability and target interaction properties of candidate anticancer taxanes, ahead of expensive clinical trials.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This first web-based single-information portal will play a central role and help researchers to move forward in taxane-based cancer drug research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany and Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh, 11451 Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Kasi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Murugan
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Lab, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, 600 044 Tamil Nadu India.
authors.forename: Sangeetha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shanmugasamy
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Lab, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, 600 044 Tamil Nadu India.
authors.forename: Saleh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Al-Sohaibani
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Lab, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, 600 044 Tamil Nadu India.
authors.forename: Naga
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Vignesh
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Lab, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, 600 044 Tamil Nadu India.
authors.forename: Kandavel
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Palanikannan
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Lab, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, 600 044 Tamil Nadu India.
authors.forename: Antonydhason
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vimala
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Lab, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai, 600 044 Tamil Nadu India.
authors.forename: Gopal Ramesh
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Kumar
keywords: Anticancer drugs; Database; Drug discovery; Semisynthetic taxanes; Taxanes