Deployment of I-Lab service across ICSN/CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) will give French researchers instant access to modern chemical databases and property prediction programs
ACD/Labs Online (I-Lab) enables scientists to calculate through an internet web interface NMR Spectra (1H, 13C, 15N, 19F, 31P NMR), physicochemical properties (pKa, LogP, LogD, and solubility at various pH values, boiling points, and more), and generate Iupac and CAS Index systematic names.
Online structure-enabled searches retrieve experimental values from extensive databases of NMR assignments and physicochemical values.
Prof Jean-Yves Lallemand, director of the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (CNRS) at Gif sur Yvette, and a renowned specialist in NMR research, states: "Our Institute is the biggest public research institution in France for organic chemistry, with more than 300 researchers - mainly PhD students.
"The topics we deal with are extremely broad and we needed modern tools to facilitate NMR predictions and physicochemical properties.
"We became convinced that ACD/Labs offered the products we needed, and decided to purchase licenses for online access, and ACD/NMR Manager to develop our own databases.
"Public research must keep in touch with up-to-date tools designed to optimise daily work in the laboratory.
"We therefore proposed to the chemistry department of the CNRS to negotiate with ACD/Labs (through its representative in Europe, Chemcad), a nationwide agreement.
"This agreement is established for the next two years.
"At this time, we have already had many positive returns from various labs, and this confirms that such a deployment can address a real need within our institution".
The CNRS deployment was arranged through Chemcad, ACD/Labs's official distributor for France, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands.
Yves Lorrain from Chemcad, France, comments on the agreement: "After several evaluations by ICSN experts, CNRS decided to put in place a two-year contract with ACD/Labs to allow all the researchers to have access to the ACD/Labs prediction tools.
"This will allow each researcher to save precious time and focus their efforts on the research area of their work.
"Chemcad is pleased to be able to provide full support to this initiative in France".
Antony Williams, vice president and chief science officer at ACD/Labs, furthers: "ACD/Labs is widely acknowledged as the premier supplier of prediction algorithms for physicochemical properties, for NMR prediction, and for the generation of systematic nomenclature.
"With ACD/Labs Online, our vision has been to provide access to our prediction algorithms and databases via an internet service to ensure that academia in particular can enjoy the advantages of low IT support for such an application, as well as the cost benefits resulting from a centrally hosted system.
"The CNRS join such internationally renowned organisations as Stanford and Carnegie-Mellon universities as beneficiaries of ACD/Labs Online and all it has to offer".
