8. Applications and industrial prospects

Drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry requires constant innovation and ever-greater efficiency. In the 1990s, combinatorial chemistry infiltrated academic and industrial laboratories, and the solid phase was used to synthesize large libraries. By the 2000s, after enormous investment efforts, combinatorial chemistry had failed to deliver the expected results. Screening libraries of 1,000-10,000 molecules is no guarantee of success in discovering new active substances. The strategy is now to focus on target molecules, improved synthesis and process optimization. In all cases, solid-phase synthesis has played, and will continue to play, a pivotal role in the development and discovery of new drugs.