Categories: Medicinal Chemistry

Pharmaceutical Substances

Description

The 4th edition of Pharmaceutical Substances is designed to be a complete reference guide to every pharmaceutical compound of significance. It provides a compendium of nearly 2300 pharmaceutical ingredients of interest to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Pharmaceutical Substances is an invaluable resource for anybody involved in the design, discovery, development, and evaluation of drugs.

Pharmaceutical Substances was developed by Axel Kleemann and Jürgen Engel, as a solution to the problems they encountered when creating their own bibliography for laboratory research. As a result these two great research chemists have brought together items of information that, in their experience, are used day-in-day-out by pharmaceutical chemists. Together with their co-authors, Bernhard Kutscher and Dietmar Reichert they have created an indispensable tool for researchers.

Pharmaceutical Substances is a first point of reference for any person wishing to screen references to drugs before turning to more detailed primary literature, such as the original patent application or the original research paper. Extensive indexing and cross linking of references provides the reader with a fast and easy way to compare pharmaceutical ingredients with similar characteristics.

All compounds are organized alphabetically according to their International Nonproprietary Name (INN). For added ease of use the book features 4 additional indexes:

• Intermediates
• Trade Names
• Enzymes, Microorganisms, Plants and Animal Tissues
• Substance Classes

The description of each compound includes:

• Chemical structure
• Graphical representation of synthetic route including intermediates
• Nomenclature: INN standard, trivial names, synonyms, CAS number
• ATC codes
• Medical applications/Therapeutic category
• Toxicological data
• Patent number, origin, holder and date of application
• Commercial information
• Bibliographic information including CASSI codes

Editorial Review

"Pharmaceutical Substances" is one of the major reference works from Thieme-Verlag that must be available in every library. The two books are a joy for every pharmacist, as they use different indices to quickly find the active ingredient, formulations, trade names and active ingredient targets or uses.

What pleases the chemists, and especially the medicinal chemists, are the synthetic routes, which are only available in the form of schemes, but of course are always supplemented by references (mostly patents). The display methods were selected by hand, this ensures that the best way is described - apart from secret optimizations that have not been published.

In addition to the "Trade Names" there is a substance class index and another with intermediate products of the synthetic routes. The CD-ROM also allows field and full text searches, which is why the electronic version is certainly interesting. A demo version can be downloaded from Thieme Verlag. Unfortunately, a structure search is only possible via the Internet in a special online version, which reduces the value of the CD-ROM for the chemist a little.

The two volumes far surpass other standard works and are aimed at pharmacists and medicinal chemists alike. The more comprehensive a book becomes, the more practical the electronic versions become. "Pharmaceutical Substances" is so comprehensive that the production of the electronic versions is more than justified!