Drug discovery and vaccine development using mixture-based synthetic combinatorial libraries

The approaches and concepts that encompass combinatorial chemistry represen t a paradigm shift in drug discovery and basic research. Viewed initially a s a curiosity by the pharmaceutical industry, combinatorial chemistry appro aches are now recognized as essential drug discovery tools that decrease th e time taken for discovery and increase the throughput of chemical screenin g by as much as 1000-fold. Although the use of mixture-based synthetic comb inatorial libraries was one of the first approaches presented, its inherent strengths are only recently being recognized. Numerous mixture-based libra ries of peptides, peptidomimetics and heterocycles have been synthesized an d deconvoluted using the positional scanning approach. Mixture-based librar y approaches for drug discovery and vaccine development will be reviewed he rein.