Screening libraries are designed with different purposes in mind. Understanding their strengths can help you select the most appropriate collection for your project.
Repurposing libraries contain approved drugs, clinical candidates, or compounds with established human use.
Their primary advantage is the availability of existing efficacy, pharmacology, and safety data, making positive screening results easier to translate into follow-up studies.
Use when:
Think:
Is there already a drug that can produce the desired effect?
Bioactive libraries contain compounds with known biological activities and mechanisms of action spanning many target classes and pathways.
These collections are particularly valuable for understanding biological systems and identifying pathways involved in an observed phenotype.
Use when:
Think:
What biology is involved in my phenotype?
Focused libraries concentrate on a specific target class, pathway, disease area, or protein family.
Rather than providing broad biological coverage, they increase the likelihood of finding hits within a defined scientific area.
Examples include:
Use when:
Think:
How can I investigate this biology in greater depth?
Diverse libraries are designed to maximize chemical diversity and provide an unbiased approach to hit discovery.
They are particularly valuable when little is known about the target or when novel chemical matter is required.
Use when:
Think:
What new chemistry can I discover?
Fragment libraries consist of low molecular weight compounds that can efficiently sample chemical space despite their small size.
Fragments typically exhibit weak binding and are usually identified using biophysical or structural screening methods.
Once identified, fragment hits can be optimized into more potent compounds.
Use when:
Think:
Can I find a small binding fragment that can be developed further?