# DrugBank & ChEMBL

Source: https://onco.cc/collections/drugbank-chembl/  
OnCo record `drugbank-chembl` (Collection). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

DrugBank and ChEMBL hold the chemistry and mechanism of every drug and most tool compounds.

## Summary

DrugBank and ChEMBL are the two reference databases of drugs and bioactive molecules, with targets, mechanisms and pharmacology, and between them they cover the chemistry and mechanism of every drug and most tool compounds. ChEMBL, run by EMBL-EBI under CC BY-SA, holds more than two million compounds with bioactivities; DrugBank, from the University of Alberta and free for academic use, provides structured drug-target-interaction data. On OnCo the pair is linked to the institution EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute and cited by the bottlenecks Too many combinations to test and No incentive to repurpose cheap drugs. It also supports ideas such as An open engine that ranks every drug pair by predicted synergy before anyone runs a trial.

## Fields

- Kind: Collection
- Last checked: 2026-09-04
- URL: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/
- Holds: Drug and bioactive molecule databases with targets, mechanisms, and pharmacology.
- Licence: ChEMBL CC BY-SA; DrugBank free academic

## Sources

- DrugBank & ChEMBL: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/

## Connected records

- collections: [Therapeutic Target Database (TTD)](https://onco.cc/collections/ttd/)
- bottlenecks: [No incentive to repurpose cheap drugs](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-generic-repurposing/), [Too many combinations to test](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-combination-space/)
- ideas: [A commons of shelved cancer drugs with their full data, open to new hypotheses](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-shelved-asset-commons/), [A drug screen that only rewards killing sleeping cancer cells](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-dormancy-selective-screen/), [A shared compound library that rare cancer researchers can actually use](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-shared-compound-access-pool/), [An open engine that ranks every drug pair by predicted synergy before anyone runs a trial](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-synergy-ranking-engine/), [Every approved cancer drug ships with a public combination-readiness data pack](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-combo-readiness-dossier/), [Pre-registered, publicly scored AI ranking of repurposing candidates for cancer](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-reg-preregistered-ai-repurposing-scoring/), [Require every oncology candidate to publish how much reaches the brain](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-brain-exposure-disclosure/)
- institutions: [EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/embl-ebi/)

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