Combinatorial chemistry and molecular diversity approaches to scientific inquiry and
novel product research and development (R&D) have exploded in the 1990s. For example,
in the preparation of drug candidates, the automated, permutational, and combinatorial
use of chemical building blocks now allows the generation and screening of unprecedented
numbers of compounds. Drug discovery – better, faster, cheaper! Notably, more compounds
have been made and screened in the 1990s than in the last 100 years of pharmaceutical
research combined, and new drug candidates are possibly for the first time making
their way into clinical development pipelines in a more efficient way.