About two years ago, chem. research groups began to develop a modified version of the classical approach to lead discovery, that is synthesis-screening-identification-optimization.The new approach, summarized under the name combinatorial chem., uses the automation techniques to accelerate the synthesis and separation of candidates in lead discovery.Since the structure of the compounds is known, the process is actually reduced to one of verification of structure proposals.The classical way to verify involves human resources to a large extent.The new synthesis techniques result in the generation of tremendous numbers of new compoundsTo handle the anal. task at reasonable costs, the following steps in the laboratory need to be rationalized:- Sample preparation and data acquisition - Data management - Archiving and automatic generation of knowledge bases - Verification
