News Release

SciFinder 2006 launches powerful new substance search capablities

SciFinder provides similarity searching of CAS registry

Business Announcement

Chemical Abstracts Service

Washington, D.C., August 28, 2005 - Building upon a decade of innovation, the new SciFinder 2006 advances its reputation as an essential information tool and part of the process of chemical and pharmaceutical research. For the first time, scientists exploring the CAS Registry of 26 million organic and inorganic chemical substances can retrieve "similar substances" to foster new ideas and directions in drug discovery and other fields of scientific inquiry. "Similarity Searching" is only one of several new features adding new power and depth to SciFinder this year. CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, launched SciFinder 2006 and SciFinder Scholar 2006 this week at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.

Nobel Laureate, Dr. K. Barry Sharpless, W. M. Keck Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute, shared his reflections regarding the significance of SciFinder:

"We were using SciFinder at Scripps even before SciFinder Scholar was invented," said Dr. Sharpless. "I am a big user and don't see how any researcher could hope to excel without daily, round-the-clock access. In the old days, you could be forgiven for not knowing about a certain paper, but now there is no excuse. The speed and scope of its search power is amazing, and the answer to 'what aspect is most helpful for you?' could be as diverse as the users. In my case, SciFinder enhances my reactivity insights, making it easier to 'see' those ill-defined boundaries where important new phenomena are lurking."

New features of SciFinder 2006 include:

  • Similarity Searching - as a complement to SciFinder substructure searching, similarity searching permits new options for identifying substances of interest via precise statistical analysis using the Tanimoto algorithm;

  • Structure Query Tools - to identify substances more precisely, new tools permit drawing a variable attachment point and a repeating group;

  • Reaction Searching - finding reaction information has been enriched with new content and features; these include reaction conditions and identifying intermediate reactions in a multi-step reaction. Scientists can also click any substance in the reaction display to find additional information, including retro-synthetic pathways;

  • Navigation & Usability - improvements include duplicate detection and removal for more efficient combined searching of the CAplus and MEDLINE databases. A new Locate feature permits quick access to journal and patent documents by entering journal titles, author names and other partial bibliographic information.

While announcing the release of SciFinder 2006 for Windows, CAS revealed that a native MAC OS X version of SciFinder will appear in fourth quarter 2005.

SciFinder was created in 1995 with the vision of providing scientists easy, point-and-click access to chemical information. The new intelligent research tool -- a client-server product for the desktop -- was an immediate hit with scientists, assisting them and other researchers worldwide with access to the multidisciplinary CAS databases. Today, tens of thousands of scientists at pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical companies around the world use SciFinder regularly to explore research topics, browse scientific journals and stay up-to-date on recent scientific developments. SciFinder Scholar was introduced in 1998 to serve the needs of campus-wide searching in academia and now serves more than 1,000 institutions of higher learning worldwide.

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CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, provides the world's largest and most current collection of chemical and related scientific information, including the most authoritative database of chemical substances, the CAS Registry. CAS combines these databases with advanced search and analysis technologies to deliver the most complete and effective digital information environment for scientific research and discovery, including such products as SciFinder, SciFinder Scholar, STN, STN Express and STN AnaVist, among others. The CAS web site is at www.cas.org.


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