Addition of Solubility Information to Online Chemical Sourcing Database

MolPort has announced the addition of pre-competitively sourced solubility information to its online chemical sourcing database. Its biopharma customers are able to immediately access and use the information to refine searches of commercially available screening compounds as required.

“Our customers who order large numbers of diverse compounds for screening tell us that typically some 1-5% of the samples they receive cannot be tested, as they are not sufficiently soluble in standard solvents. This wastes time and money and delays the screening process. Our customers asked us for a way to avoid this and so we decided to incorporate solubility information into our database,” said Imants Zudans, CEO at MolPort.

Many customers have already provided MolPort with solubility information on their purchased screening compounds, understanding the benefit in pre-competitive information sharing as a way to avoid compounds with solubility issues and help to streamline screening programs. “Having a realistic solubility flag in the MolPort database will let us refine compound searches,” said Professor Paul Wyatt PhD, FRSE, Head of the Drug Discovery Unit and Director of the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee.

“Focusing on soluble compounds in individual records and via list searches, and excluding those that are insoluble, will avoid time-wasting and expense in our screening programs.” Dr David Koes PhD, Assistant Professor, Computational & Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh, added: “Compound solubility is critical information and knowing this information in advance makes screening significantly more cost effective and productive.”

MolPort has already added customer-provided and validated solubility information (shown as “soluble”, “known solubility issues”, and “undefined”) for over 1 million compounds in its database, with some 2000 items flagged with solubility issues. The solubility flags are available in individual compound records and online quote files and can be used as parameters in List Searches to filter out potentially insoluble compounds and replace them with soluble analogues. The solubility database is also available as a full digital download, which can be requested via the MolPort website.     

MolPort is encouraging other customers to share their solubility information as a pre-competitive benefit to all. A data template will be available on its website for customers to supply solubility data for addition to the online MolPort database.