The World Traditional Medicine Patent Database

HTS (High Through-put Screening) and combinatorial chemistry have proven to be immensely useful in drug discovery. However, it was realized that the ability of these approaches to increase the number of new drugs during the past decades was limited. At the same time, pharmaceutical industry showed an increasing interest in natural products. The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been experienced several thousand years of clinic trials and it is well known that TCM is a great resource for scientists to discover new drugs from natural products.

In order to make the knowledge of the detailed relations between natural products and medical usages, we have composed a novel and unique natural product database, the World Traditional Medicine Patent Database (WTMPDB) which collects all the patents for the natural products from the TCM and the traditional medicine from many other nations. Patent documents are the resources that precisely record medical innovation and scientists or engineers can use to produce the natural medicine from the recipes or can be inspired to find new drugs based upon this knowledge.

The WTMPDB database covers all patent literature related to natural medicines, issued by more than 20 countries and international organizations since 1985. The database has both Chinese and English version and contains more than 110,000 (>200,000 family patents). The data have been deeply indexed and categorized. Several auxiliary databases are provided to offer professional search, such as multi-language search, index term and code search, chemical structure search and formula similarity search. Several auxiliary databases are also created to increase the usability, such as TCM dictionary, chemical substance registry, synonym dictionary, natural medicine registry. This database facilitates the efficient utilizing of patent information. Here, we will present all the details and applications regarding this unique database.