High Throughput Screening Techniques

Advances in automation and high throughput screening techniques for rapid identification of lead compounds. 

Therefore, polymer libraries, in combination with high-throughput screening techniques, are highly useful tools for the evaluation of (quantitative) structure-property relationships and/or the identification of hits of certain desired properties of the evaluated materials. These tools help researchers to understand their research problems more thoroughly by, e.g., finding optimal process conditions or product performance within a reduced amount of time and/or experimental effort. 

Now with the advent of high throughput screening techniques, also known as combinatorial methodologies, pioneered by Symyx Technologies and the subject of this book, the catalyst researcher is provided with an entirely new tool which allows for experimentation to be accelerated by a factor of 102 to 104. This indeed is remarkable as is amply described and dissected in the different contributions of this book, for it is now possible to combine chemical know-how, experience, intuition and fast experimentation all at once. 

It is a truly high throughput screening technique. As many as 1 X 109 cells/hr can be processed with state-of-the-art research instrumentation and somewhat lower but comparable rates are attainable with top-of-the-line commercial instruments. The isolation of rare clones represented within a heterogeneous population at frequencies as low as 1 107 has been demonstrated (Leary, 1994). 

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