# Weird characters in compound synonym

**URL:** https://community.opentargets.org/t/weird-characters-in-compound-synonym/2046
**Category:** Community Feedback
**Created:** [29 June 2026 17:46 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/weird-characters-in-compound-synonym/2046 "2026-06-29T17:46:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Tiejun\_Cheng](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/tiejun_cheng/32/919_2.png) [@Tiejun\_Cheng](https://community.opentargets.org/u/Tiejun_Cheng)
#### Post date: [29 June 2026 17:46 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/weird-characters-in-compound-synonym/2046/1 "2026-06-29T17:46:08Z")

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To whom it may concern,

I found some weird characters in the compound synonyms, e.g., verorab�0000ae on the following page. Note that you have to click “show more” to see this name. I have seen more cases like this in the download file: [Index of /pub/databases/opentargets/platform/26.06/output/drug\_molecule](https://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/opentargets/platform/26.06/output/drug_molecule/)

> **[Open Targets Platform](https://platform.opentargets.org/drug/CHEMBL2107909)**
>
> The Open Targets Platform integrates publicly available datasets to support systematic identification and prioritisation of drug targets.

Sincerely  
Tiejun Cheng

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### Author: ![irene](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/irene/32/50_2.png) [@irene](https://community.opentargets.org/u/irene)
#### Post date: [30 June 2026 08:48 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/weird-characters-in-compound-synonym/2046/2 "2026-06-30T08:48:42Z")

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Hi @Tiejun_Cheng and welcome to our community!

Thank you for the detailed bug report. After your message, we’ve identified that the root cause is in the _LLM extraction_ input data. Some responses from the OpenAI Batch API returns corrupted JSON escape sequences (\u0000 instead of \u00 for accented characters like é, ö, ® as you have noted), which json.loads() then interprets as embedded null bytes.

This affects:

- 171 rows in investigated\_drugs.synonyms that we use for **`drug_molecule`**
- 6 rows in diseases.diseaseFromSource in **`clinical_report`**
- … and \*\*`evidence_clinical_precedence`\*\*and **`clinical_target`** because they propagate the malformed disease names we see in the above datasets

We will prepare a fix for our next release that patches the intended characters from the corrupted escape sequences (e.g., `\x00e9` → `é`). In the meantime, we hope you can omit or work around these affected rows on your end. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please let us know if you find any other issues.

Best,  
Irene

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### Author: ![Tiejun\_Cheng](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/tiejun_cheng/32/919_2.png) [@Tiejun\_Cheng](https://community.opentargets.org/u/Tiejun_Cheng)
#### Post date: [30 June 2026 12:46 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/weird-characters-in-compound-synonym/2046/3 "2026-06-30T12:46:00Z")

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Thanks for the prompt response. No rush. I just ignore such characters for now.

Best  
Tiejun