Current practices in generation of small molecule new leads

The current drug discovery processes in many pharmaceutical companies require large and growing collections of high quality lead structures for use in high throughput screening assays. Collections of small molecules with diverse structures and "drug-like" properties have, in the past, been acquired by several means: by archive of previous internal lead optimization efforts, by purchase from compound vendors, and by union of separate collections following company mergers. More recently, many drug discovery companies have established dedicated efforts to effect synthesis by internal and/or outsourcing efforts of targeted compound libraries for new lead generation. Although high throughput/combinatorial chemistry is an important component in the process of new lead generation, the selection of library designs for synthesis and the subsequent design of library members has evolved to a new level of challenge and importance. The potential benefits of screening multiple small molecule compound library designs against multiple biological targets offers substantial opportunity to discover new lead structures. Subsequent optimization of such compounds is often accelerated because of the structure-activity relationship (SAR) information encoded in these lead generation libraries. Lead optimization is often facilitated due to the ready applicability of high-throughput chemistry (HTC) methods for follow-up synthesis. Some of the strategies, trends, and critical issues central to the success of lead generation processes are discussed below.