CHMIS-C: a comprehensive herbal medicine information system for cancer.

A comprehensive herbal medicine information system for cancer (CHMIS-C) has been developed. The current version of the database integrates information on more than 200 anticancer herbal recipes that have been used for the treatment of different types of cancer in clinic, 900 individual ingredients, and 8500 small organic molecules isolated from herbal medicines. Furthermore, subsidiary databases of literature references and molecular targets have been constructed. A number of web-based searching tools have been developed and integrated into the information system for efficient data mining. The compounds in the database have been linked to the corresponding entries in the National Cancer Institute's database, and to a database of drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This paper provides a description of the individual subsidiary databases, integration of the entire database, and data mining tools. We demonstrate that this comprehensive information system may be used as an effective informatics tool for anticancer drug discovery.