How to use the IUPHAR receptor database to navigate pharmacological data

Abstract

Today's data-intensive, interdisciplinary research challenges scientists to keep up to date with key experimental techniques and tools reported in the literature. The International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology Database (IUPHAR-DB) goes some way to addressing this need by providing expert-curated information sourced from primary literature and displayed in a user-friendly manner online. The database provides a channel for the IUPHAR Nomenclature Committee (NC-IUPHAR) to provide recommendations on the nomenclature of receptors and ion channels, to document their properties and the ligands that are useful for receptor characterization. Here we describe IUPHAR-DB's main features and provide examples of techniques for navigating and exploring the information. The database is freely available online at http://www.iuphar-db.org/.