Microwave–assisted combinatorial chemistry: The potential approach for acceleration of drug discovery

In the present scenario, pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to speed-up their drug discovery programmes and to lower the cost of discovering new medicines. Combinatorial chemistry and high through put synthesis are almost well established as potential means of speeding up the drug discovery process, these techniques have been embraced widely by the pharmaceutical industry but there is still more need to speed-up the drug discovery. The use of microwave energy to combinatorial synthesis is one potential way to accelerate drug discovery. The advantages of microwave heating technology to combinatorial chemistry mainly includes dramatically reduced reaction time, increase in purity of resulting products and enhancement of chemical yields. In this review we discuss basic introduction to microwave theory which will enable researchers to understand at a molecular level the fundamental nature of phenomenon which results in heating and covered literature published which reveals advantageous nature of microwaves to combinatorial chemistry.