Now, a team of researchers from University of California San Diego and their colleagues have created a publicly‑available online reference library of chemical “fingerprints” from thousands of drugs, their breakdown products and related compounds. The study is published in Nature Communications.

How the drug fingerprint library works

Comparing unknown compounds in a patient’s blood, urine or other biological sample to those in the Global Natural Product Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) Drug Library, as it is called, reveals a more accurate picture of their drug exposure than what is listed on a patient’s medical record, according to the researchers.