100 million chemicals

One little bit of chemistry news that I always try to cover are the milestones as the Chemical Abstracts Service announces the next “round number” in its database of chemical structures. It was September 2007 when I mentioned their reaching 50 million structures, but I am fairly sure I wrote about their 10 millionth in newscientist back in the early 1990s…

This week, CAS announced the 100 millionth chemical substance in its registry in the service’s 50th anniversary. That is quite astounding, 100 million chemicals! On average a new substance registered every two and a half minutes since 1965, although three quarters of the entries were added only in the last decade.

SB-CAS-RN-1786400-23-4

The 100 millionth (entry references CAS RN 1786400-23-4) is a drug for acute myeloid leukaemia, developed by Coferon in Stony Brook, New York, USA.