SAN LEANDRO, CA – August 8, 2005 – Elsevier MDL announces the August 2005 release of a significantly enhanced 3.0 version of the MDL® Assay Explorer® system for capturing bioassay experimental results and methodologies and analyzing biological data.

“The new release of MDL Assay Explorer will feature significant usability, performance and integration improvements that are tailored to discovery workflows,” said Dr. Trevor Heritage, Senior Vice President, Workflow Business Group. “The improved Assay Explorer will give biologists greater freedom in deciding how to analyze their data and reduce their reliance on IT support. Scientists can spend more time in the lab and less time crunching numbers.”

Usability. The flexible Assay Explorer system will streamline workflow by making it easy for biologists to add columns and associated calculations to a spreadsheet when analyzing experimental results—without having to wait for administrative help to modify a template. The new Job Monitor will enable the biologist to closely monitor HTS data streaming off a robotics system. If there are potentially problematic trends in the results, the biologist can stop the experiment, saving both time and precious reagents. Assay Explorer’s improved, more flexible curve-fitting engine will accelerate the analysis of dose response curves. The biologist can manually select the initial parameters for the curve-fitting algorithm or, using the new curve optimizer, the system will automatically generate optimal parameters for the best fit of the curve.

Performance. The new Assay Explorer makes it possible to create and calculate a 500 × 96-well-plate HTS experiment in less than five minutes and has been shown to recalculate an existing experiment in two seconds.

Integration. The ability to import and export plate layouts between MDL Assay Explorer and the MDL® Plate Manager repository further streamlines laboratory workflows. After selecting hits in Assay Explorer, biologists can immediately create a request in Plate Manager. Assay Explorer also integrates out-of-the-box with GraphPad Prism® for non-linear regression analysis and with a variety of other third-party statistical analysis and modeling tools.

The new MDL Assay Explorer release demonstrates Elsevier MDL's commitment to developing innovative products that support biology and screening workflows. For example, biologists can also use the MDL® Base user interface in the MDL® Isentris® architecture to analyze screening records in relation to chemical, ADME and other discovery data.

Elsevier MDL provides informatics, database and workflow solutions that accelerate successful life sciences R&D by improving the speed and quality of scientists' decision making. Researchers around the world depend on Elsevier MDL for innovative and reliable discovery informatics software solutions and services augmented by 400 Elsevier chemistry and life sciences journals and related products. For more information, visit www.mdl.com. Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. For more information, visit www.elsevier.com.

Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange). For more information, visit www.reedelsevier.com.