ZINC database

PMID 26479676Release date2004AccessWebsiteZINCMiscellaneousLicenseZINC is free to use for everyone. Redistribution of significant subsets requires written permission from the authors.VersioningZINC15Data release
frequencycontinuously updated; static subsets regenerated quarterly or better.Curation policycontinuously curated

The ZINC database (recursive acronym: ZINC is not commercial) is a curated collection of commercially available chemical compounds prepared especially for virtual screening. ZINC is used by investigators (generally people with training as biologists or chemists) in pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and research universities.

Scope and access

ZINC is different from other chemical databases because it aims to represent the biologically relevant, three dimensional form of the molecule.

Curation and updates

ZINC is updated regularly and may be downloaded and used free of charge. It is developed by John Irwin in the Shoichet Laboratory in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Version

The latest release of the website interface is "ZINC 15" (2015). The previous website was at ZINC, but the maintainers recommend moving to ZINC15 because of its better search capabilities. The database contents are continuously updated.