Chemical Bank "NPDepo"
NPDepo: Natural Products Depository In recent years, "Chemical Biology" a research field that aims to elucidate life phenomena using chemical substances as a starting point, has been attracting attention in Japan, and is being integrated with genome and proteomics research using the latest compound synthesis technologies.
The Chemical Resource Development Unit at RIKEN is building a database of compounds synthesized both inside and outside the laboratory and natural products, including secondary metabolites of actinomycetes, as well as instrumental analysis spectra, and is constructing a system to provide these data.
Databases of biological information have been developed through the results of research in the life science field, such as the Human Genome Project, which aims to decipher the nucleotide sequence of the human genome, and the Protein 3000 Project, which aims to analyze the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Along with this, there is an increasing need to develop compound databases that compile structural data, isolation and synthesis methods, and biological activity information of compounds, as well as a "Chemical data bank" that serves to collect compounds.
NPDepo aims to build a library with diversity so that many compounds can be used by researchers who need test compounds.
Business Overview
The Chemical Resource Development Unit/Chemical Bank collects and stores natural compounds isolated from actinomycetes, and builds a diverse compound library by receiving deposits from researchers who hold the compounds. A compound database including not only names and structures of compounds but also physical properties and instrumental analysis data will be created and made publicly available to researchers who wish to use them.
Chemical Probe Project
There are many laboratories within RIKEN that are developing synthetic reactions for compounds, but the challenge is to increase the usefulness of the synthesized compounds. Therefore, the Chemical Probe Project accepts and manages newly synthesized compounds in a redistributable form and provides them to laboratories conducting evaluation studies of compound libraries. Thus, our mission is to connect depositors of compounds with evaluators of compounds.
Advanced Technology Platform (CSRS Center Mission)
The Chemical Biology Research Group has developed a standardized evaluation system, iHOPE. This system profiles phenotypes induced by a variety of samples, including animal cells, fungi, and protozoa, and identifies small molecule compounds (bioprobes) with interesting biological activities.
Based on the iHOPE system evaluation data, we are building a subset library of active compounds classified into nine bioactivity categories as Target Libraries. We aim to improve the hit rate of compound search and provide structure-activity relationship information to provide a library that leads to improved activity.
