GVK BIO licences out its SAR database to Scottish drug discovery body

Hyderabad-based GVK Biosciences today said that it had licensed its Online SAR Database, Gostar, to the drug discovery unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee.

Gostar, a manually curated database prepared by the informatics division at GVK BIO, has been developed over the span of a decade by a team comprising of more than 200 curators.

It contains over 6 million compounds manually curated through the screening of over 2 million patents and 400,000 journals and it also contains more than 18 million quantitative SAR points.

The product has been issued globally in various areas such as pharmaceuticals, academics, government sectors, apart from numerous publications that cite the data contained in Gostar.

The informatics division at GVK BIO is a frontrunner in the industry and is known for its manually curated databases in the area of SAR, biomarkers and clinical outcomes. In addition to this, the division also provides custom data curation services in multiple areas.

Gostar is the final outcome after the integration of over 15 individual databases, which includes the complete chemical space for 10 of the popular Biological Targets. In addition to this, the MedChem Databases include all published and patented inhibitors against biological targets that exceed 6,500 in number.

In addition to this, Gostar also contains two databases on Toxicity and Natural Products each. Several analysis tools have also been built into the product to enhance its performance.

Sreeni Devidas, vice president business development at GVK BIO said, "We are excited that the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee has decided to license Gostar. This database will provide valuable information to the researchers at Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) and aid them in their drug discovery endeavours."

Professor Ian Gilbert, DDU head of medicinal chemistry and acting head of the division of biological chemistry said, "The Dundee drug discovery unit (DDU) is pleased to be able to license the Gostar database from GVK BIO. The DDU has the remit of developing translational research at Dundee and outside, by bringing together the Unit's experience of drug discovery in the pharma/biotech sector with basic academic research to identify new treatments for diseases.

It is a rare fully operational and integrated drug discovery team within UK universities working across multiple disease areas, with the full range of disciplines required to produce novel hit and lead candidates. It is envisaged that the GOSTAR database will greatly impact the drug discovery efforts underway within the DDU"