[2][4] The compound was developed by Columbia University chemist Ronald Breslow and Memorial Sloan-Kettering researcher Paul Marks.

[5][6] Vorinostat was the first histone deacetylase inhibitor[7] approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of CTCL on October 6, 2006.

[9][10] Memorial Sloan-Kettering researcher Paul Marks approached Columbia University chemist Ronald Breslow about these findings and together they decided to develop more potent analogs of DMSO, in order to make use of this property for cancer treatment.

[23] Recent evidence also suggests vorinostat can be a therapeutic tool for Niemann-Pick type C1 (NPC1), a rare lysosomal lipid storage disease.

[24] Preclinical experiments by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers suggest the cancer drugs vorinostat, belinostat and panobinostat might be repurposed to treat infections caused by human papillomavirus, or HPV.