With the advent of combinatorial chemistry a new paradigm is evolving
in the field of drug discovery. The approach is based on an integratio
n of chemistry, high-throughput screening and automation engineering.
The chemistry arm is usually based on solid-phase synthesis technology
as the preferred approach to library construction. One of the most po
werful of the solid-phase methods is encoded split synthesis, in which
the reaction history experience by each polymeric bead is unambiguous
ly recorded. This split-and-pool approach, employing chemically robust
tags, was used to construct a 85 000-membered dihydrobenzopyran libra
ry.