Compound Library Management

The growing number of compounds synthesized and screened in the phar-maceutical industry due to the rapid development of high-throughput chemis-try and screening technologies are a response to the need of more and better quality compounds in the industry pipelines. But these inmense collections (from several hundred thousands to several millions of compounds) pose a tremendous logistical problem to be overcome in order to harvest all their tre-mendous potential. Some reviews have appeared to deal with this topic (1,2), but an update seemed necessary due to the rapid evolution of this field. The scope of this chapter is the management of different types of compound collec-tions from both physical and electronic points of view, including some aspects of natural product-extracts collections. This management is a very difficult and demanding process involving the use of sophisticated equipment and databases. The first thing to bear in mind when implementing this process is that a spe-cialized and dedicated group should be created to be responsible for maintain-ing the collection and processing the orders or requests from the rest of the company. Failure to do so usually ends up with a chaotic situation where no samples can be retrieved in due time and proper format, with no control on the available amounts and locations of the samples. Proper management of the compound collection is the foundation of a quality screening organization. If this function does not operate properly, the most advanced assay technologies will fail to afford reproducible lead compounds.