MDL was founded in January 1978 as Molecular Design Limited. The three founders, Stuart Marson and Stephen Peacock (both UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellows) and W. Todd Wipke (a professor at UC Santa Cruz) started the company as a computer-aided drug design consultancy, but soon realized that there was more customer interest in the tools they had created for manipulating chemical structures in computers than in their consultancy efforts, and they switched to making products: the first MDL product MACCS (Molecular ACCess System) was shipped in 1979, and the first customers were Chevron's Ortho Division (Richmond, CA), Shell (Modesto, CA), and FMC Corporation (Princeton, NJ).

This was followed in 1982 by REACCS (REaction ACCess System), and then MDL's first molecule and reaction databases Fine Chemicals Directory, Organic Syntheses, and Theilheimer. MDL kept pace with technology, introducing a PC-based product suite, Chemist's Personal Software Series, in 1985, and a client-server, heterogeneous database integration product, ISIS (Integrated Scientific Information System), in 1991.

MDL's customer base continued to grow, and by 1984, it had 100 customer installations, and customers had formed the first MDL Users' Group. To operate near its customers, MDL opened offices in New Jersey, Switzerland, and the UK, and signed Fujitsu as its Japanese distributor.

MDL was part of the Maxwell Communications conglomerate from 1987 to 1992, and was then publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock market in 1993 as MDL Information Systems, Inc. MDL acquired Occupational Health Services, Inc. in 1994, and in 1997 was itself acquired by Reed Elsevier. MDL remains part of Elsevier, the scientific and medical division of Reed Elsevier, and in 2004 changed its trading name to Elsevier MDL.

Other alliances and acquisitions continued to round out MDL's product offerings. The Elsevier acquisition of Beilstein Information Systems in 1998 allowed MDL to market the prestigious CrossFire Beilstein database, followed soon after by CrossFire Gmelin. MDL also acquired Interactive Simulations, Inc. (a San Diego molecular modeling company), Afferent Systems, Inc. (a San Francisco combichem tools company), and SciVision, Inc. (a Burlington QSAR company).

MDL's product offerings kept pace with advances in discovery techniques, with MDL Screen for high throughput screening, and Project Library and Central Library for combinatorial chemistry: and with newer technologies, with MDL Chime for handling structures on the Web, and Relational Chemical Gateway for storing structures in Oracle® databases.

Elsevier MDL has been at the forefront of discovery informatics for over 25 years and continues to offer its life sciences customers a complete and evolving data management and integration solution complemented by detailed scientific data and information that powers the process of invention.

Elsevier MDL now operates from 12 sites on three continents, with approximately 430 staff, and has over 50,000 users of server-based products at 500 installations. In 2004 Elsevier MDL in Tokyo took over distribution and support of MDL products in Japan with an expanded organization to manage all customer-facing activities in Japan.

In just the last four years MDL has introduced:

• The DiscoveryGate® environment for integrating, indexing and linking scientific information
• The xPharm® database of pharmacological information, linking agents, targets, disorders and principles
• The MDL® Patent Chemistry Database indexing chemical reactions, substances and related information from organic chemistry and life science patent publications (World, U.S. and European) since 1976
• The MDL® Isentris® platform, the first out-of-the-box, n-tier discovery informatics architecture specifically designed for life sciences researchers, consisting of the revolutionary MDL® Base user interface, MDL® Draw chemical drawing and rendering software, MDL® Core Interface middle tier with Integrating Data Source and the MDL® Direct chemical data cartridges for molecules and reactions
• MDL® Logistics integrated materials management solution built on the Isentris platform
• MDL® Notebook, a new generation electronic data capture, auditing, tracking, storing, sharing and reporting solution built on Isentris

1979 — First commercial system for computer handling of chemical structures (MACCS)

1982 — First commercial system for computer handling of chemical reactions (REACCS)

1984 — First system to integrate chemical structures with data (MACCS-II)

1985 — First PC-based chemistry database system (CPSS)

1986 — First integrated drawing and word-processing package (ChemText)

1988 — First commercial 3D structure database (MACCS-3D)

1989 — First system to store structures of mixtures and formulations (MACCS-II Substance Module); first system to link structure databases with relational database management systems such as Oracle® technology (MACCS-II DBMS Interface Module)

1991 — First client-server system for chemical and biological information (MDL ISIS)

1992 — First 3D search system with conformationally flexible searching (MACCS-3D and ISIS)

1994 — First chemical ActiveX component, and one of first commercial ActiveX components (ISIS Object Library), etc.

1995 — First desktop solution for combinatorial chemistry (Project Library) and for high-throughput screening (MDL Screen)

1996 — First commercial enterprise system for structure-based handling of generic structures (Central Library); first chemically-aware spreadsheet (MDL ISIS for Excel); first searchable chemical structures in Web pages (MDL Chime plug-in and MDL Chemscape Server); system to store structures in Oracle® databases (Relational Chemical Gateway)

1999 — First commercial system to link citations to electronic articles (MDL LitLink)

2000 — Biological data management system (MDL Assay Explorer)

2001 — Chemistry data cartridges for molecule structure and reaction management (MDL Direct)

2002 — First commercial system linking synthetic methodology databases to major reference works and the primary literature (Integrated Major Reference Works); first commercial system to index multiple structure databases and link to synthetic methodology databases and to major reference works (DiscoveryGate); first fully documented, fully supported discovery informatics platform for integrated chemistry/biology research (MDL Core Interface)

2003 — Software tool (developed in cooperation with USFDA) for predicting potential carcinogenic risk of compounds based on their structures (MDL Carcinogenicity Module); first middle-tier domain service launched in MDL Isentris (MDL Cheshire 3.0); sample/plate management system based on MDL Isentris (MDL Plate Manager)

2004 — Complete MDL Isentris discovery informatics platform released upon completion of MDL Base user interface; DiscoveryGate expanded to the academic community; MDL Patent Chemistry Database launched; xPharm® pharmacology database added to content offerings; MDL Assay Explorer Visualizer released

2005 — MDL Isentris 1.4 released with enhanced data pivoting/workflow support; MDL Isentris Alliance program introduced with growing number of partner companies building integrated informatics solutions on Isentris technology; new faster, simpler, easier-to-use DiscoveryGate released with Mac OS X availability; MDL Assay Explorer 3.0 released with improved performance, usability and integration; MDL Logistics reagent management and MDL Notebook ELN solutions launched; new Learning Centers introduced offering customer-focused training; new online ordering service streamlines licensing of selected content and framework products