The tools we actually use.

PubChem The largest free database of chemical structures, properties, and bioassay results. pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ChemSpider Royal Society of Chemistry structure search, good for cross-checking identifiers. chemspider.com MolView Draw a structure in the browser and see it in 3D straight away. No installation. molview.org ChemDraw The standard for drawing structures and schemes for publication. Most universities hold a site licence, so check with your department before paying. revvitysignals.com Licence needed Protein Data Bank Every published protein structure, including the co-crystals you need for docking. rcsb.org DrugBank Approved drugs with targets, mechanisms, pharmacology, and interactions. go.drugbank.com Rowan Quantum chemistry and conformer calculations run in the browser. rowansci.com DataWarrior Free desktop tool for exploring SAR tables and chemical space visually. openmolecules.org eMolecules Check whether a building block is actually purchasable before you design around it. search.emolecules.com MedChemExpress Catalogue of inhibitors and reference compounds, with datasheets worth reading before you order. medchemexpress.com Supplier

Drug Hunter Monthly breakdowns of new approvals and notable molecules. The single best habit for building medicinal chemistry judgement. drughunter.com Free and paid Journal of Medicinal Chemistry The central journal of the field. Read the paper discussions, not only the abstracts. pubs.acs.org ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters Short, fast reports of new series and SAR findings. pubs.acs.org Drugs@FDA Official approval records, labels, and review documents for US-approved drugs. accessdata.fda.gov Journal of Natural Products Natural product isolation and characterisation, a recurring source of new scaffolds. pubs.acs.org

UniProt The reference for protein sequence and function. Start here for any new target. uniprot.org NCBI BLAST Compare a sequence against everything known, to find homologues and orthologues. blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov AlphaFold Database Predicted structures for proteins that have never been crystallised. alphafold.ebi.ac.uk Mol* Viewer Fast, modern structure viewer that runs in the browser. Handles large complexes. molstar.org GeneCards A quick orientation on any human gene and its disease associations. genecards.org EMBL-EBI A collection of tools and databases across the whole of molecular biology. ebi.ac.uk

Google Colab Run Python, RDKit, and machine learning in the browser with a free GPU. No setup. colab.research.google.com Hugging Face Open models and datasets, including a growing set for chemistry and biology. huggingface.co RDKit The open-source cheminformatics toolkit behind most property and fingerprint work. rdkit.org Chemistry42 A generative design platform. Worth understanding even if you never buy it, because it shows where the field is going. pharma.ai Commercial Theraos AI agents that reason across therapeutic assets, clinical trials, and the companies developing them. Useful for seeing a target in its commercial context, not only its chemistry. theraos.ai Commercial NotebookLM Load a set of papers and question them together. Good for literature review. notebooklm.google.com Perplexity Search with citations, which makes claims easier to verify than plain chat. perplexity.ai ChatGPT Useful for code and explanation. Always check chemical claims against a primary source. chat.openai.com

PubMed The biomedical literature index. Learn its field tags and it becomes very powerful. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Google Scholar Broad coverage, citation counts, and alerts for new work on your topic. scholar.google.com ACS Publications The American Chemical Society journal family, including JACS and Org. Lett. pubs.acs.org Nature High-level findings across the sciences, with strong chemistry and drug discovery coverage. nature.com Science As above, and worth reading for how results are argued, not only what they are. science.org New England Journal of Medicine Where the clinical trials behind the medicines are actually reported. nejm.org bioRxiv and medRxiv Preprints, months before journal publication. Not peer reviewed, so read critically. biorxiv.org

MIT OpenCourseWare Full university course materials, free. The organic chemistry sequence is excellent. ocw.mit.edu Coursera University courses with structure and deadlines. Many can be audited at no cost. coursera.org edX Similar to Coursera, with strong chemistry and biology offerings. edx.org Khan Academy The clearest starting point if the fundamentals feel shaky. Free throughout. khanacademy.org LibreTexts Chemistry An open textbook library covering most undergraduate chemistry. chem.libretexts.org

BioRender Publication-quality biology and pathway figures without fighting a drawing program. biorender.com Free tier Zotero Free reference manager. Start using one before your first paper, not after. zotero.org Overleaf Collaborative LaTeX in the browser, for theses and journal templates. overleaf.com Notion Lab notes, project tracking, and reading lists in one place. notion.so Canva Quick posters and slides when you need something presentable fast. canva.com Grammarly Useful for second-language scientific writing, though it will not fix your argument. grammarly.com