Houghten, R. et al, “Strategies for the Use of Mixture-Based Synthetic Combinatorial Libraries: Scaffold Ranking, Direct Testing In Vivo, and Enhanced Deconvolution by Computational Methods”, J. Comb. Chem., 2008, 10, 3-19
Recently a collaborator pointed me to the above article by Houghten and co-workers where they describe the use of mixture-based combinatorial libraries for high-throughput screening (HTS) experiments.
Traditionally an HTS experiment will screen thousands to millions of individual molecules. Obviously, it’s all done by robots so though you have to be careful during setup it’s not like you have to do it all by hand. But the fact is, if it’s possible to reduce the actual number of individual screens, life becomes easier and cheaper. Houghten et al describe an elegant approach that does just this.
So much to do, so little time 