DrugBank Card Types are a categorization system designed to make navigating our drug data easier. We have three Card Types: Exploratory, Mapped, and Enriched.
Each Card Type contains different amounts of information and are ideal for different uses.
Exploratory Cards
Minimal data, based on a drug mentioned in a clinical trial.
Useful as a starting point to explore related trials, conditions, phases, and sponsors.
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Exploratory Cards serve as a starting point for identifying early signals. They are best used when scanning for preliminary drug-trial connections or reviewing drugs that may warrant deeper follow-up.
Through an Exploratory card’s mapping to a clinical trial you can investigate the data linked to the trial such as the:
You might also use an Exploratory card to explore similar therapeutic areas of the drug from the clinical trial.
Data Available
Exploratory Card Types include the Clinical Trials field as well as a few basic data fields.
Limitations
More drug-specific information is not available for these drugs. As such you will not find information related to a drug's mechanism of action or its properties.
Mapped Cards
Mid-level data coverage, including identifiers and associated properties.
Useful for connecting drugs to trials and supporting sources.
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Mapped drug data cards help you investigate how a drug connects to clinical trials, external data sources, and standardized identifiers. These cards offer a reliable starting point for surfacing linked information across public databases and are well-suited for broad queries, early research, or building foundational context.
Data Available
Mapped Cards contain structured data that has been automatically sourced from trusted public databases such as ClinicalTrials.gov, UNII, and NCATS Inxight Drugs.
The cards contain mid-level data coverage and can include the following fields: drug structure, drug category, and UNII or CAS identifiers.
Limitations
Mapped Cards are limited to structured fields and do not generally include additional context such as mechanism of action or pharmacology data.
Enriched Cards
Reviewed and verified data.
Reflects our most complete data coverage.
Best suited for detailed analysis.
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Enriched drug data cards are best suited for in-depth research and analysis. These cards offer the most complete and trusted view of a drug’s profile available within DrugBank. They are ideal when you need to confidently answer a research question, whether you're conducting target validation, assessing clinical viability, or comparing therapeutic strategies.
Data Available
Enriched Cards include reviewed and verified information pulled from a broad set of high-quality sources. This may include:
Drug labels and regulatory documentation
Academic publications and preprints
Industry sources such as pipelines, patents, and presentations
Data from trusted organizations like NIH, NCI, and NCATS Inxight Drugs
In some cases, the data has undergone review or manual validation. In others, it has been validated through trusted pipelines and cross-referenced sources. While many Enriched Cards are manually curated, our focus is on completeness and reliability over the method of curation.
Limitations
Enriched Cards may not include every detail found in source documents, particularly highly specialized experimental data. Additionally, not all Enriched Cards are fully manually curated. The enrichment process prioritizes trust and connectivity over format or authorship.
DrugBank Drug Cards are created and maintained using both automated and manual curation processes.
Recategorization
As new information is published and added to DrugBank a card can be recategorized. An Exploratory card could be recategorized as Mapped if additional identifiers and associated properties are added to the drug card. A Mapped card could be recategorized as Enriched if it goes through a review process to verify the card’s data.
How to Use Card Types
Card Types allow you to quickly identify the drug data that contains the level of detail best suited for your research. Card Types can be found paired with our drug data in both the Browse and Search data cards as well as alongside all drug names in the Table Builder.
Within a given drug data card you will find an icon next to the drug’s name with the associated card type. You can also find the DrugBank Card Type data field near the top of all drug data cards.
Within Browse and Search you are able to refine your results by selecting the Card Type you would like to be included or excluded in the Browse By section.
In Table Builder, any drug name will be paired with its Card Type icon. You can choose to include or exclude certain Card Types from your table in the Table Settings.
