FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
ACD/Labs
(416) 368-3435 ext 297
media@acdlabs.com
Advanced Chemistry Development FREE Naming Software Service
Generates 100,000 IUPAC Names Around the World
Advanced Chemistry Development has been the premier supplier of quality systematic nomenclature
generation for over half a decade. In that time ACD/Name has grown to support the two primary
systematic nomenclature systems, IUPAC and CAS Index, as well as Name-to-Structure generation.
ACD/Name is used by thousands of chemists around the world and has become the de facto standard for
many nomenclature experts who wish to be aided in their nomenclature tasks by software. As well as a
standard PC desktop offering of the product, ACD/Labs made available a web-based transactional
service for access to all of their prediction engines and content databases. This service is known as the
Interactive Laboratory, I-Lab. As a service to the chemistry community, in April 2000 ACD/Labs made the
ability for chemists worldwide to generate IUPAC Names at no cost at using I-Lab available. Some
constraints were introduced including only handling compounds with up to 50 atoms and containing H, C,
N, P, O, S, F, Cl, Br, I, Li, Na, and K or polycycles with up to 3 rings. However, the system is fully capable
of naming various functional groups and cyclic systems including bridged fused and spiro systems,
assigning stereodescriptors to chiral centers and double bonds, and naming salts and other
multicomponent systems.
On June 2, 2003, ACD/Labs generated the 100,000th IUPAC Name from the I-Lab website. Our logs
indicate that these IUPAC Names were generated for chemists around the world including Argentina,
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary,
Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, South Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia,
Mauritius, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal,
Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam. These
names were generated at a rate of 2500 +/- 600 per month over the period from April 2000 to June 2003
(see Figure 1) though recent statistics indicate that, at times, over 500 are being generated in a single
day!
Figure 1: The Growth Curve of the Number of Names Generated Using
ACD/Free IUPAC Name at I-Lab and via the ACD/Affiliate Program
In order to help spread the wealth regarding this online capability, ACD/Labs collaborated with a series of
organizations who wished to provide access to the Naming service. For this purpose, ACD/Labs created
the ACD/Affiliate Network which allowed other websites to provide access within their website to the
online IUPAC naming service. This included the possibility to draw and edit chemical structures and print
the drawn structure with its generated IUPAC name. Examples of access to the online system embedded
in third part web pages can be seen at the IUPAC website as shown in Figure 2, as well as at Chemweb
and over two dozen other Affiliate members.
Figure 2: IUPAC website
Learn more about the ACD/Affiliates program to provide access to FREE IUPAC naming from your
website.
Following the obvious interest in the Free Naming capability at I-Lab, ACD/Labs made the decision to
provide this capability for other structure drawing packages. Free IUPAC Naming under the same
constraints available at I-Lab was made available initially for ACD/ChemSketch, both the commercial and
Freeware versions. Today almost a quarter of a million freeware users of ACD/ChemSketch have access
to the freeware IUPAC naming. The commercial version of ACD/Name is integrated into
ACD/ChemSketch and features enhanced naming capabilities that allow systematic name generation
according to both IUPAC and CAS Index nomenclature rules, in addition to generating chemical
structures from names. ACD/Labs has also integrated the Freeware Naming module to CambridgeSoft
ChemDraw and MDL ISIS to allow scientists to take advantage of their structure drawing package
preference but still gain access to the standard Naming software.
The development of ACD/Labs naming tools is ongoing and the naming of various biochemical
compounds, together with organic compounds, is now supported. ACD/Labs specialists take part in
IUPAC nomenclature activities to ensure that recent changes in nomenclature are taken into account and,
when possible, included into the development plans for the nomenclature products.
When ACD/Labs initially agreed to support the efforts of IUPAC to "spread the word" regarding systematic
nomenclature, it was expected, based on the interest at that time, that only a narrow geographical region
would take advantage of the service. With the continuing spread of WWW access, scientists around the
world are taking advantage of the system. We are proud to have been of service to IUPAC and to the
chemical community as a whole.
###