The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) assumed primary responsibility for the Protein Data Bank (PDB) – the world’s largest archive for biomedical structures used in pharmacological and medical research.

The PDB, originally under the management of Helen Berman at Rutgers University and Phil Bourne at UCSD/SDSC, is a nonprofit international archive for biomolecular structures used in pharmaceutical and medical research.  The three-dimensional structures of proteins and other biological macromolecules contained in the PDB hold significant promise in the search for new drugs with few or no side effects and the effort to understand the mystery of human disease. Medical researchers are gaining new insights on the causes, effects and treatment of many diseases by unlocking the disease-fighting potential of biological macromolecules. This requires very precise and accurate information on the atomic structure of complex molecules, information that is housed in the PDB.