Project SCANCER: An Open-access Drug Repurposing and Data-mining Platform to Enhance Target Validation and Optimize International Research Efforts against Highly Progressive Cancers

Abstract The expanding body of potential therapeutic targets requires easily accessible, structured, and transparent real-time interpretation of molecular data. We invite research teams to join and aim to enhance the cooperative work of more experienced groups to harmonize international efforts to overcome less prevalent, devastating malignancies. We show how we integrated our previous expertise in small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) with data mining approaches to initiate a new platform to overcome highly progressive cancers such as triple-negative breast and pancreatic cancer. Here, we integrate available fundamental data and present a novel, open access, data-mining, drug repurposing platform, deriving our searches from the entries of Clue.io. Through the front end, users can create their drug-target list to select the clinically most relevant targets for further functional validation assays or drug trials. SCANCER integrates searches from publicly available databases, such as PubChem, Drug Bank, PubMed, and EMA; and complementing them with background information on compounds using entities like UniProt, String, and genecards. Cancer drug discovery requires a convergence of complex, often disparate fields. We present a simple, transparent, and user-friendly drug repurposing database.