Linear combinatorial solid phase organic synthesis

Chemical libraries are changing the face of chemistry through the discovery of useful compounds, including drugs, catalysts, and other materials. Mirroring the work of biologists, chemists have developed combinatorial approaches to synthesizing these large arrays of related molecules and screening them to identify the compounds for desired function (e.g., the best inhibitor of a given enzyme, or the best catalyst for a given transformation).; A new method for combinatorial chemistry for chemical library synthesis is presented that combines to previously incompatible strengths of two commonly used methods: fully parallel synthetic steps for split/mix synthesis and easy compound identification of spatial encoding. By using a one-dimensional solid support, synthesis can easily be carried out in a fully parallel manner while retaining information of compound identification by the compound's position along the one-dimensional solid support (thread).