On the Record

NGP. Would you be able to give a brief overview of the role CAS plays in the market?
MT. CAS is generally regarded as the most comprehensive source of chemistry-related information. Since 1907, our mission has been to put scientists in touch with the work of their colleagues worldwide. Today, we accomplish that primarily through our databases and electronic search services, although we still publish the well-known Chemical Abstracts (CA) issues and indexes, as well.

While we remain the leading information resource for chemists, CAS has always interpreted ‘chemical information’ in the broadest sense, and the scientists we serve include a growing number of researchers in biology, medicine, and a wide range of other fields for which chemistry is relevant. Our SciFinder research tools exemplify the extent of our reach, in that tens of thousands of scientists consider it ‘part of the process’ in their daily work in chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies, government research institutions and universities around the world.

NGP. What is substance identification, and why is it a special strength of CAS?
MT. Our CAS Registry database is the largest collection of substance information and comprises virtually every chemical substance reported in scientific literature and patents. New substance records are added continuously as CAS editorial scientists evaluate the latest substance information reported in the documents we analyze for CAS databases. In 2004 alone, for example, we added more than 2,380,000 records for organic and inorganic substances, essentially small molecules. In total, the CAS Registry contains records for nearly 27 million of these, plus millions of sequences, such as DNA and proteins.

A key component of this collection is the CAS Registry Number, a concise numerical identifier for each unique substance, which provides a link to the complete substance record in the CAS Registry. CAS Registry Numbers (often called simply CAS Numbers) are widely used in chemical inventories such as TSCA, product labels, material safety data sheets and many other media where accurate identification of chemicals is essential. The CAS Registry Number is concise enough to fit easily on product labels but also links anyone who needs it to a wealth of substance information – including chemical names, molecular structures, property data, and more.

NGP. Why is use of the public literature and patents important to drug discovery?
MT. There are many aspects of public literature that facilitate scientific advancement and can lead to important progress for drug discovery. Scientific literature is a record of observations about nature and nature’s events. Consider the most direct situation, where a journal article reports a specific biological activity of a series of structures, measured in a bioassay environment. Those observations, and in fact the data, may have immediate application to a drug candidate design and directly influence the discovery process.

Knowing from the published literature that a compound or group of compounds has a certain activity (or no activity) in an assay system directly enables a more advanced hypothesis to be tested or provides a scientist with a context from which to create a more likely successful agent. Consider also a less direct situation, where a now elapsed patent reports a natural product with aspects of a desired drug effect. In rather simple terms, the adage: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” is most true in science. And simply repeating the work of others normally does not result in discovery.

NGP. What is the significance of information from patents, as opposed to journal literature?
MT. Information in both patents and journal scientific publications is important. But patent information describes intellectual content that might be commercially viable if taken to a marketplace. Journal literature on the other hand describes science in scientific terms, not commercial terms. Chemistry and chemical phenomenon that are described in patents have a rather unique ability to enable financial success as compared to any other science. Because the scientific observations (and biological effects in some cases) can be repeated with considerable certainty, chemistry patents, when a new advantageous compound is described with its creation or use in some manner, can immediately establish a monopoly commercial position for a chemistry invention. For instance, in the case of a discovered drug, the patent protecting and disclosing that invention may for some period of time enable its inventor an unlimited ability to establish that compound in the marketplace for therapy. When disclosed in a patent and that patent is found by others through a service and databases like CAS’, the granted document will have the advantage of advance science by its disclosure while simultaneously enabling the inventor to position his or her invention for protection from infringement. This makes the chemical and pharma enterprises valuable and, owing to the societal and financial gains possible, stimulates the rapid advancement of chemistry and drug discoveries.

NGP. What does CAS have to offer with regard to secondary information?
MT. CAS has always been known as the ‘key to chemical literature’, and the cornerstone of our services is the thorough analysis and indexing of chemistry-related literature and patents that our scientists provide. To information professionals, CAS is considered a pioneer in secondary information services, and remains the gold standard in terms of both comprehensiveness and quality. Today, our bibliographic databases, CA and CAplus, contain records for some 24 million documents, including both journal article and patent records, among other document types.

While the web has made a vast volume of miscellaneous information widely available, serious researchers need professionally analyzed information more than ever. In brief our indexing, substance records, and state of the art search tools fulfill that need. CAS has the largest collection of substances in the public in our CAS Registry file, and almost 10 million chemical reactions are described in CAS’ CASREACT. Furthermore, those substances described in more general or generic terms in patents via Markush structures since the mid-1980s are available in CAS’ MARPAT database.

NGP. What special qualifications do CAS document analysts have?
MT. Most of CAS’ chemists have advanced degrees in science. About half of all CAS staff building the CAS databases have MS or PhD degrees, with many having considerable research knowledge and post-doctoral or faculty academic experience. In the drug discovery areas, many of CAS’ chemists have worked for Pharmas, are holders of patents, or have published widely in an area of synthetic chemistry. Many of CAS’ staff have been analyzing documents for most of their lives, while a large number of others are fresh out of school or the laboratory. It is a unique and powerful combination of experiences that comes together in a collegial, yet high technology publication analysis environment at CAS.

NGP. Have you noticed changes in the patterns of published literature and patents relating to pharmaceutical research in recent years? What about the national origins of these publications?
MT. There are many trends over the years in published pharmaceutical research. To mention a few:

1. Drug delivery approaches have exploded from slow and sustained release tablets to trans-dermal systems and complex blood agent monitoring systems.
2. In the realm of stereoisomer drugs, resolution of racemate drugs to the more useful active enantiomer by approaches ranging from stereo-specific synthesis to chiral chromatography.
3. The intense interest in natural product drug candidates, especially in the areas of cancer therapeutics.
4. Molecular biology as a therapeutic realm, with such approaches as RNA therapies, stem cell therapies, and early/in utero gene therapy systems.

The location of work or national origins of publications in the most advanced concepts and experiments is still very largely in the US, Western Europe, and Japan. But there are some early indications, based primarily on patenting activity, changing intellectual property laws, and issues with experimental design, that India and China will be a focus for advances in pharmaceutical sciences. In these locations, experience with traditional medicines may act as a catalyst and an enabler for some approaches, while possibly making adaptation to western medical practices ultimately more difficult.