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Food additives are substances added to food to maintain or improve its safety, freshness, taste, texture, or appearance. All food additives used in food undergo a safety assessment, which includes rigorous testing, before they are approved, so all food additives are generally recognized as safe substances.

MCE supplies 444 approved food additives which are safe substances and can be used for drug discovery and other research.

A drug metabolite is a byproduct of the body breaking down, or “metabolizing” a drug into a different substance. Most drugs undergo chemical alteration by various bodily systems as a way to create compounds that are more easily excreted from the body. Drugs can be metabolized by oxidation, reduction, hydrolysis, hydration, conjugation, condensation, or isomerization. Drug metabolism can produce metabolites with physicochemical and pharmacological properties that differ substantially from those of the parent drug, and consequently have important implications for both drug safety and efficacy.

MCE offers a unique collection of 212 drug metabolites which is a useful tool for drug safety and efficacy study and drug repurposing.

Adult stem cells are important for tissue homeostasis and regeneration due to their ability to self-renew and generate multiple types of differentiated daughters. Self-renewal is reflected by their capacity to undergo multiple/limitless divisions. Several signaling pathways are involved in self-renewal of stem cells, that is, Notch, Wnt, and Hedgehog pathways or Polycomb family proteins. Recent studies mainly focus on cancer stem cell (CSCs), induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSCs), neural stem cell and maintenance of embryonic stem cell pluripotency. Among them, CSCs have been believed to be responsible for tumor initiation, growth, and recurrence that have implications for cancer therapy.

MCE owns a unique collection of 1,757 compounds that can be used for stem cell regulatory and signaling pathway research.

From target identification to clinical research, traditional drug discovery and development is a time-consuming and costly process, which also bears high risk. Compared with traditional drug discovery, drug repositioning or repurposing, also known as old drugs for new uses can greatly shorten the development cycle and reduce development cost, which has become a new trend of drug development. After undergoing clinical trials, approved drugs have identified bioactivities, good pharmacokinetic characteristics and safety, which can greatly improve the success rate of drug discovery. A number of successes have been achieved, such as metformin for type 2 diabetes and thalidomide for leprosy and multiple myeloma, etc.

MCE provides a unique collection of 1,390 China NMPA (National Medical Products Administration) approved compounds, which have undergone extensive preclinical and clinical studies and have well-characterized bioactivities, safety and bioavailability properties. MCE NMPA-Approved Drug Library is a good tool for drug repurposing which could dramatically accelerate drug development.