ChemSpider Blog

There’s no shortage of possibilities regarding where we could go next with ChemSpider and we’re always thinking ahead. At present we are focused on chemistry document markup and the development of ChemMantis. Moving forward we are considering how chemists might want to use ChemSpider. Based on comments from organic chemists over the past few months a lot of chemists are using ChemSpider to source chemicals for purchase for screening and specifically to find starting materials for further reactions.

Recently we added the ChemSynthesis structure collection. That database offers links out to over 45,000 articles regarding reaction synthesis. We are now being encouraged to manage reactions directly on ChemSpider. While we of course have the skills to do so it’s not in our near future. But, what if we did?  Then retrosynthetic analysis might be possible. At the ACS meeting in Philadelphia in August I gave a presentation on ARChem Route Designer, a software product marketed by SimBioSys . It was my privilege to give this presentation on behalf of one of the most respected chemists, Peter Johnson, someone who has been at the forefront of tools for synthesis design and structure based drug design. Take a look at the presentation about ARChem…for chemists interested in software tools for Retrosynthetic Analysis it may be of interest…and I wonder whether a platform like this might be of interest to integrate to ChemSpider…what do YOU think????