ChEMBL Bioactivity Database Scraper

What it does

This actor scrapes molecule and bioactivity data from the ChEMBL database maintained by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). It searches for chemical compounds by name or keyword and retrieves detailed molecular information including ChEMBL identifiers, preferred names, molecule types, clinical trial phases, molecular properties, SMILES strings, and InChI keys. The actor handles offset-based pagination and provides clean, structured output.

Why use this actor

This actor provides a simple, reliable, and scalable way to extract data from public APIs without needing to write any code or manage infrastructure. It handles pagination, rate limiting, error recovery, and data normalization automatically. Whether you are a researcher, analyst, or developer, this actor saves you hours of manual data collection work. The structured JSON output integrates seamlessly with spreadsheets, databases, dashboards, and downstream data pipelines. Run it on Apify platform for automatic scheduling, monitoring, and proxy management.

Input parameters

• searchQuery (string, required): Molecule name or keyword to search ChEMBL. Default: "aspirin".
• maxResults (integer, optional): Maximum number of molecule records to return. Range: 1-1000. Default: 100.

Output data

The actor outputs a dataset with the following fields:

• moleculeChemblId: ChEMBL molecule identifier
• prefName: Preferred name of the molecule
• moleculeType: Type of molecule (small molecule, protein, etc.)
• maxPhase: Maximum clinical trial phase reached
• oralFlag: Whether the molecule is orally available
• molecularWeight: Full molecular weight
• smiles: Canonical SMILES representation
• inchiKey: Standard InChI key

Each record is validated and null-checked before being pushed to the dataset. Missing or unavailable fields are set to null rather than being omitted, ensuring consistent schema across all records.

Example output

[
    {
        "moleculeChemblId": "CHEMBL25",
        "prefName": "ASPIRIN",
        "moleculeType": "Small molecule",
        "maxPhase": 4,
        "oralFlag": true,
        "molecularWeight": "180.16",
        "smiles": "CC(=O)Oc1ccccc1C(=O)O",
        "inchiKey": "BSYNRYMUTXBXSQ-UHFFFAOYSA-N"
    }
]

Pricing

This actor is priced based on usage:

• $0.01 per result returned in the dataset
• $0.005 per actor start (flat fee per run)

These costs cover Apify platform compute and proxy resources. For large-scale scraping jobs, consider using the maxResults parameter to control costs and stay within your budget. Typical runs of 100 results cost approximately $1.01.

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