ZINC database

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ZINC database
Content
DescriptionChemical database
Data types
captured
Commercially available and annotated small molecules for virtual screening
Contact
Research centerUniversity of California San Francisco
Laboratory  Irwin Lab
  Shoichet Lab
AuthorsJohn Irwin, Brian Shoichet, and a cast of several
Primary citationPMID 26479676
Release date2004
Access
WebsiteZINC
Miscellaneous
LicenseZINC is free to use for everyone. Redistribution of significant subsets requires written permission from the authors.
VersioningZINC15
Data release
frequency
continuously updated; static subsets regenerated quarterly or better.
Curation policycontinuously curated

The ZINC database (recursive acronym: ZINC is not commercial) is a curated collection of commercially available chemical compounds prepared especially for virtual screening. ZINC is used by investigators (generally people with training as biologists or chemists) in pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and research universities.

Scope and access[edit]

ZINC is different from other chemical databases because it aims to represent the biologically relevant, three dimensional form of the molecule.

Curation and updates[edit]

ZINC is updated regularly and may be downloaded and used free of charge. It is developed by John Irwin in the Shoichet Laboratory in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Version[edit]

The latest release of the website interface is "ZINC 15" (2015). The previous website was at ZINC, but the maintainers recommend moving to ZINC15 because of its better search capabilities. The database contents are continuously updated.

See also[edit]

  • PubChem a database of small molecules from the chemical and biological literature, hosted by NCBI
  • ChEMBL, a database of information about medicinal chemistry and biological activities of small molecules.

External links[edit]