Skills drugbank-database
💊

drugbank-database

Safe ⚙️ External commands🌐 Network access📁 Filesystem access🔑 Env variables

Access DrugBank drug database information

Also available from: davila7

DrugBank is a comprehensive bioinformatics database containing detailed drug information. This skill enables programmatic access to drug properties, interactions, targets, pathways, and chemical structures for pharmacology research and drug discovery.

Supports: Claude Codex Code(CC)
🥈 78 Silver
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Test it

Using "drugbank-database". Get information for ibuprofen including its drug-drug interactions

Expected outcome:

  • Ibuprofen (DB01050) - FDA-approved small molecule NSAID
  • Indication: Treatment of pain, inflammation, and fever
  • Mechanism of action: Cyclooxygenase inhibitor
  • Drug-drug interactions found: 267
  • Major interactions: Warfarin (increased bleeding risk), Aspirin (reduced cardioprotection), Lithium (increased levels)
  • Targets: Prostaglandin G/H synthases 1 and 2 (COX-1, COX-2)

Using "drugbank-database". Find targets for warfarin including their gene names

Expected outcome:

  • Target 1: Vitamin K epoxide reductase complex subunit 1 (VKORC1) - Gene: VKORC1
  • Target 2: Cytochrome P450 2C9 (CYP2C9) - Gene: CYP2C9
  • Target 3: Cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) - Gene: CYP3A4
  • Target 4: Prothrombin (F2) - Gene: F2
  • Enzymes: CYP2C9, CYP3A4, CYP1A2, CYP2C19 (metabolism)

Security Audit

Safe
v4 • 1/17/2026

This is a legitimate scientific skill for accessing the DrugBank bioinformatics database. All 353 static findings are FALSE POSITIVES caused by the analyzer misinterpreting Markdown code block syntax and bioinformatics terminology. The skill uses the official drugbank-downloader package for authenticated access to a recognized public database. No actual security risks were identified after manual evaluation.

8
Files scanned
2,964
Lines analyzed
4
findings
4
Total audits

Risk Factors

⚙️ External commands (3)
SKILL.md:21-24 references/data-access.md:14-17 references/chemical-analysis.md:17-47
🌐 Network access (2)
references/data-access.md:148 references/chemical-analysis.md:23
📁 Filesystem access (2)
references/data-access.md:20 scripts/drugbank_helper.py:188-189
🔑 Env variables (1)
references/data-access.md:14-16
Audited by: claude View Audit History →

Quality Score

68
Architecture
100
Maintainability
85
Content
30
Community
100
Security
91
Spec Compliance

What You Can Build

Drug mechanism research

Extract mechanism of action, pharmacodynamics, and ADME data for drug candidates

Interaction safety analysis

Check drug-drug interactions for polypharmacy regimens and identify contraindications

Similarity-based repurposing

Find structurally similar drugs to identify potential repurposing candidates

Try These Prompts

Get drug information 
Get information for drug DB00001 including name, type, indication, and mechanism of action
Check drug interactions 
Check if aspirin (DB00945) and warfarin (DB00682) have any known drug-drug interactions
Find drug targets 
Find all protein targets for metformin (DB00331) and their UniProt IDs
Chemical similarity search 
Find 5 drugs structurally similar to aspirin based on Tanimoto similarity

Best Practices

  • Use environment variables for DrugBank credentials, never hardcode them
  • Specify exact DrugBank version for reproducible research
  • Cache parsed XML data to avoid repeated downloads and parsing

Avoid

  • Using outdated DrugBank versions without version specification
  • Ignoring interaction severity classifications in safety analysis
  • Trusting predicted ADMET properties without experimental validation

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get DrugBank access credentials?
Create a free account at go.drugbank.com and accept the academic license agreement
Is commercial use allowed?
Academic use is free. Commercial use requires a paid DrugBank license
What Python packages do I need?
Install drugbank-downloader, lxml, pandas, rdkit, networkx, and scikit-learn
Can I search drugs by name?
Yes, use the search_by_name function with exact or partial matching
How do I check multiple drug interactions?
Use check_polypharmacy() with a list of DrugBank IDs to find all pairwise interactions
What chemical properties are available?
SMILES, InChI, molecular weight, logP, polar surface area, and Lipinski's Rule of Five compliance

Developer Details

Author

K-Dense-AI

License

MIT

Repository

https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/claude-scientific-skills/tree/main/scientific-skills/drugbank-database

Ref

main

File structure

📁 references/

📄 chemical-analysis.md

📄 data-access.md

📄 drug-queries.md

📄 interactions.md

📄 targets-pathways.md

📁 scripts/

📄 drugbank_helper.py

📄 SKILL.md