This white paper demonstrates how to retrieve and explore drug-related information from the literature, and how to use this information to better discover and understand key differences in drug mechanism of action.

You’ll learn how IPA^®’s Search and Explore tools can be used to understand and identify the key mechanistic differences between Celebrex (celecoxib) and Vioxx (rofecoxib). Celebrex is on the market today; however, Vioxx has been withdrawn due to cardiovascular side effects. Both drugs inhibit the same target, COX-2 (or PTSG2), and are NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. This example will illustrate how to use IPA’s Search and Explore tools to understand where these drugs differ in terms of the pathways they impact, the cellular and toxicity phenotypes they play a role in, and the downstream genes they impact. The resulting comparisons can be used to generate testable hypotheses around drug mechanism of action and mechanism of toxicity.