ACD stands for Available Chemicals Directory™ which is trademarked, distributed, and licensed by MDL Information Systems, Inc., San Leandro, California. The ACD contains supplier and pricing information for both research-grade and bulk chemicals. The version of ACD referenced by Neighbor_Search is the 95.2 update, released in late 1995. This database contains 175,000 chemical substances from 230 suppliers. The ACD is the largest known structure-searchable database of commercially-available chemical entities.
MrRogers searches a subset of ACD, consisting of those ACD compounds of reasonable size ( with molecular weights less than 2000 or so), and for which structures could be generated.
There is also a version of ACD searchable by MACCSII on the VAX. That version also includes vendor information. Starting with MrRogers v2.2, the names for ACD compounds use the "MFCDnnnnnnnn" naming convention used by MDL. These names are unique for each compound in ACD and do not change from one version of ACD to another. Thus, these names can be used for doing data searches within the MACCSII version of ACD, using the following procedure:
From within the MACCSII ACD program, enter "k" to go into keyboard mode. From the "ACD Access>" prompt type "data search". A prompt will then appear saying "Enter the data field(s):". Type "1" and enter. The prompt now says "Enter the search string:". Enter the name of the desired ACD compound (such as "MFCD00087398"). When you wish to go back into graphics mode (to use the mouse for pointing & clicking) enter "g".
Searle has also licensed a standalone ACD for which a number of search and report-generation utilities have been written. Contact Tom Doman for more details.