Guide to Pharmacology (GtoPdb) Database

Overview

The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology (GtoPdb) catalogues drug targets, ligands, and quantitative interactions across receptor pharmacology. The web services REST API at https://www.guidetopharmacology.org/services/ returns JSON for targets, ligands, interactions, and family hierarchies. Base records are intentionally lean — gene symbols, UniProt accessions, ChEMBL IDs, SMILES/InChI all live in sub-resources (/targets/{id}/databaseLinks, /targets/{id}/synonyms, /ligands/{id}/structure, /ligands/{id}/databaseLinks). No authentication required.

When to Use

• Looking up the affinity (pKi/pIC50/pKd) of a ligand at a specific target
• Listing all annotated ligands for a receptor (e.g., μ-opioid receptor / OPRM1)
• Finding the approval status of a ligand (approved=true) and its cross-references (PubChem CID, ChEMBL ID, DrugBank ID)
• Retrieving the IUPHAR family hierarchy (867 families) for receptor classification
• Pulling structure descriptors (SMILES, InChI, InChIKey) for chemoinformatics
• Mapping HGNC symbol → UniProt → GtoPdb target ID for cross-database integration
• Use chembl-database-bioactivity for larger bioactivity datasets (2.4M+ compounds); GtoPdb is curated, smaller, with more annotation depth
• Use dailymed-database for FDA-approved drug labelling; GtoPdb is for pharmacology, not regulatory text

Prerequisites