Design of diverse and focused combinatorial libraries using an alternating algorithm

There is considerable research in chemistry to develop reaction conditions so that any of a very large number of reactants will successfully form new compounds, e.g. for two components, A(i) + B(j) --> A-B(ij). The numbers of A's and B's usually make it impossible to make all the possible products; with multicomponent reactions, there could easily be millions to billions of possible products. There is a need to identify subsets of reagents so that the resulting products have desirable predicted properties. Our idea is to select reactants sequentially and iteratively to optimize the evolving candidate library. The new Alternating Algorithm, AA, can be used for diversity, a space-filling design, or for a focused design, using either a near neighborhood or structure-activity relationship, SAR. A diversity design seeks to select compounds different from one another; a focused design seeks to find compounds similar to an active compound or compounds that follow a structure activity relationship. The benefit of the method is rapid computation of diversity or focused combinatorial chemical libraries.