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Michigan State University

Drug Resources: Academic Research

This guide lists a variety of resources that MSU students, staff, and faculty can use to research pharmaceuticals. It includes both MSU licensed products and free, vetted, online resources.

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MSU-Licensed Databases

Embase

Embase is particularly strong in pharmaceutical literature and research from the US, Canada, and Europe. You can do a standard search for the drug you are interested in on the main page or, for a more targeted search, select "drug search" from the"search" drop down menu at the top of your screen. It will give you many more nuanced and powerful ways to search for drug research including specialized subheadings and fields

PubMed

PubMed has a lot of primary research literature on drugs. You will need to search both the generic and trade names of the drug as well as use specialized subject headings (Pharmacological Action terms/lists) to craft a superior search strategy. The National Library of Medicine (compiler of PubMed) has a great, free, online tutorial explaining how to best search for drugs and chemical compounds in PubMed: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/drugs/intro.html