Combinatorial chemistry, small molecule drug development

The development of protein chip assays to determine protein function using purified components is a rapidly advancing area. Automated systems for the assay of protein function on chips in parallel for thousands of proteins simultaneously will likely be available in the next few years. These miniaturized arrays will be useful for basic research as well as for diagnostics and drug development. For instance, the combination of protein chips with combinatorial chemistry will allow the simultaneous screening of vast collections of small molecules against vast collections of potential target proteins. 

The identification of compounds with a desired property is a central pursuit in science. In the field of drug discovery combinatorial chemistry has played an increasingly important role for identification and optimization of drug leads which target therapeutically important biomolecules. For the successful implementation of combinatorial methods, new and innovative synthesis methods have been developed. Additionally, novel conceptual approaches to the design of compounds have been pursued to more efficiently generate libraries of small molecules. 

At first, combinatorial chemistry focused on peptide and nucleotide libraries synthesis, but because poor pharmacokinetical properties cause poor oral availability of this kind of molecule, there is increasing interest in the development of new methods to prepare small, drug-tike molecules which obey lipinski s mle of five [303]. Heterocyclic compounds can offer a high degree of structural diversity and have proven to be useful as therapeutic agents. For these, there are recent advances in the preparation of heterocycles on solid supports [304]. The examples reported in this section are organized by their ring size. 

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