New Database on the Internet

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The National Cancer Institute recently launched a new database on the Internet for scientists looking for agents that might target individual molecules involved in cancer. The Web site offers the results of a 3-year project in which thousands of compounds from NCI's drug repository were screened in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisae), a distant, single-celled relative of humans. Each of the yeast cells in the screen lacked a different gene or combination of genes known to be important in cell-cycle control or DNA repair, processes that are often defective in tumor cells. The Web site can be found through NCI's Developmental Therapeutics Program homepage at http://www.dtp.nci.nih.gov.