PDB Structure Data Impacted Discovery and Development of Recently FDA‐Approved Drugs
Protein Data Bank (PDB) was established in 1971 as the 1 st open access digital data resource in biology and medicine. Today, the PDB currently houses >145,000 atomic level biomolecular structures determined by crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and 3D electron microscopy. Managed by the Worldwide Protein Data Bank partnership (wwPDB; wwpdb.org ), PDB data are used by researchers and educators to understand the role molecules play in health and disease of humans, animals, and plants, food and energy production, and other topics of concern to global prosperity and sustainability. RCSB PDB operates the US data center for the global PDB archive, and makes PDB data available at no charge to all data consumers without limitations on usage. During calendar 2017, >679 million structure data files were downloaded from the PDB by Data Consumers working worldwide. RCSB PDB served >1 million RCSB.org users worldwide with PDB data integrated with ~40 external data resources providing rich structural views of fundamental biology, biomedicine, and energy sciences, and supported >600,000 PDB101.rcsb.org educational website users around the globe. RCSB PDB examined the impact of PDB archiving and open access availability on the discovery of 210 new molecular entities (NMEs or drugs) approved by the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2010 and 2016. Biological targets for 90% of NMEs are known. Approximately 6,000 PDB structures containing one of these drug targets and/or one approved NME were identified, providing 85% coverage of known targets and 88% coverage of 2010–2016 approved NMEs. Coverage was comparable across all therapeutic areas. Most structures were both published and freely accessible from the PDB long before the NMEs were approved. Additional analyses revealed these PDB structures were cited by more than 200,000 PubMed‐indexed publications reporting pre‐competitive research on the would‐be drug targets. PDB structures and citing publications contributed substantially to understanding of the target biology, and led to biopharmaceutical company investment in successful drug discovery/development programs. Overall, access to PDB data contribute to patent applications, drug discovery and development, publication of scientific studies, innovations that can lead to new product development and company formation, and STEM education. Support or Funding Information RCSB PDB is funded by a grant (DBI‐1338415) from the National Science Foundation , the National Institutes of Health , and the US Department of Energy . This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .