[Federal Register Volume 70, Number 169 (Thursday, September 1, 2005)]
[Notices]
[Page 52111]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 05-17488]



[[Page 52111]]

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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

National Institutes of Health


National Library of Medicine; Request for Nominations

    Summary: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is issuing this 
notice to invite private sector providers and users of chemical 
information to indicate their interest in participating in a new 
working group of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National 
Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of 
Medicine (NLM), to advise on interactions with private sector 
information providers in the development of PubChem. PubChem is a 
publicly available NIH database that includes information about the 
biological activities of chemical compounds. It is designed to 
facilitate more integrated access to these information resources for 
biomedical researchers. The working group will advise on such issues as 
improving connections with private sector chemical information 
providers in order to enhance linkages and interoperability among 
resources and avoid unnecessary duplication with commercial information 
services.
    Response Date: Persons, groups, or organizations interested in 
participating in the working group should send an e-mail indicating 
their expertise in issues related to PubChem, along with their contact 
information, to: Christine Ireland, Committee Management Officer, NLM, 
[email protected]. Emails must be received on or before October 3, 
2005.
    Supplementary Information: In 2004, as part of the NIH's Roadmap 
Initiative to speed new medical treatments and improved health care to 
all Americans, NIH launched an on-line database called PubChem as part 
of an integrated suite of databases supporting the New Pathways to 
Discovery component of the Roadmap effort. New Pathways focuses on very 
basic biomedical research, and especially focuses on understanding the 
molecular biology of health and illnesses. Bioinformatics is a critical 
component of that effort and PubChem provides the free, publicly 
available database that links chemical information with biomedical 
research and clinical information.
    Drawing from many public sources, PubChem organizes information 
about the biological activities of chemical compounds into a 
comprehensive biomedical database. All of this supports the part of the 
Roadmap called the Molecular Libraries initiative. This includes nine 
different components--a compound repository, the NIH Chemical Genomics 
Center, the Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network, PubChem, a 
series of Cheminformatics Research Centers, and technology development 
for chemical diversity synthesis, assay development, instrumentation, 
and toxicology. PubChem is the informatics backbone for virtually all 
of these components, and is intended to empower the scientific 
community to use small molecule chemical compounds in their research. 
Small molecules include many of the chemicals commonly used as 
medicines. They affect genes, proteins, cells, and people. 
Identification of small molecule tools is a compelling next step 
following on the success of the Human Genome Project. It offers a new 
paradigm to transform basic biomedical research, speeding development 
of new therapies and finding solutions to America's most important 
health problems. NIH's goals are to rapidly translate the discoveries 
of the genome into new therapeutics and to integrate small molecule 
chemistry into biomedical research. PubChem facilitates these efforts 
by linking genome, chemistry, protein, and biomedical literature 
information. This seamless integration of resources is essential for 
providing information about potential starting points for the 
development of new medications. Without PubChem, the work of NIH funded 
scientists will be greatly hampered and progress in biomedical research 
will be slowed.
    NIH intends to continue to operate PubChem as a free, publicly 
available resource that is an integral part of the NIH Roadmap 
Initiative. This is consistent with the principles of publicly funded 
science. NLM has had extensive and valuable private sector interactions 
for developing and maintaining other major information resources, such 
as sequence databases and PubMed/Medline. NIH believes that the private 
sector has expertise that will be helpful in the further development of 
PubChem and will help to ensure coordinated and integrated access by 
researchers to the full range of resources useful for advancing 
scientific discovery. Therefore, NIH is asking private sector providers 
and users of chemical information to indicate their interest in 
participating in a working group of the NLM/NCBI Board of Scientific 
Counselors, which is established under the Federal Advisory Committee 
Act. All members of such a working group would be required to disclose 
their potential conflicts. This new working group of outside experts 
would be separate from the existing PubChem Working Group, which 
provides advice about details of the operation of the PubChem database 
and also reports to the NCBI Board of Scientific Counselors. 
Specifically, this working group would advise the NCBI Board of 
Scientific Counselors on such issues as:
     Establishing a process for retrospective evaluation of the 
biomedical relevance of compounds entered into PubChem
     Ensuring the provenance of the data (i.e., whether private 
data are being improperly deposited in PubChem)
     Ensuring the high quality of data in PubChem
     Monitoring the effect of PubChem on scientific progress
     Improving/integrating interactions with commercial 
information providers
     Avoiding unnecessary duplication with commercial 
information providers

    Dated: August 29, 2005.
Anthony M. Coelho, Jr.,
Acting Director, Office of Federal Advisory Committee Policy, NIH.
[FR Doc. 05-17488 Filed 8-31-05; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4140-01-M