A Novel Way to Make Volumes of Molecular Libraries

摘要

Combinatorial chemistry is sweeping all before it, especially among pharmaceutical companies. The method produces large numbers of similar compounds, in what are called "libraries" that can then be screened for activity, which may be in triggering a biologically important receptor, or blocking the active site of a key enzyme. The method was introduced into biochemistry by H. Mario Geysen and Richard A. Houghten as a way of ringing the changes in polypeptides, so that all possible combinations of a sequence of amino acids could be conveniently produced. Now chemists are using the method in a big way to make their molecules, and are even finding ways of improving it.