Mining chemical and biological information from the drug literature.

The mining of information from the drug literature covers a broad set of disciplines that include chemistry, biology and medicine. It is not possible for any one scientist to keep up to date on the wide breadth of published pharmaceutical information. The need for researchers to find and integrate information from the drug literature with other information is apparent. This article highlights some of the key themes of 2008 publications on mining chemical and biological information, and indicates that the drug literature has exhibited a significant transformation in 2008.