Automated Combinatorial Chemistry in the Organic Chemistry Majors Laboratory

摘要

The use of combinatorial chemistry to generate libraries of compounds with identical core functionality is ubiquitous within the pharmaceutical research industry (1-3). This approach, combined with modern rapid-throughput biological assays (4), allows for efficient identification of lead structures. This Journal has published several laboratory exercises that involve combinatorial chemistry, including the synthesis of esters (5, 6), amides (7), oligopeptides (8), and hydrazones (9). Modern industrial combinatorial chemistry also incorporates a significant amount of automated instrumentation in the preparation, purification, and analysis of products. Some effort has been made to implement automation in the undergraduate laboratory experience (10, 11), and experiments using automated flow-injection techniques for protein analysis (12) and chemiluminescence detection (13) have recently been developed. Since many of our chemistry majors will work in industry, an opportunity to become familiar with this type of instrumentation is valuable.