The use of a small set of chemical building blocks, combined together in multiple ways, using standard chemistries, to create large libraries of medicinally relevant compounds that may be screened for potential new drugs. Combinatorial chemistry is used in tandem with high-throughput screening to identify compounds that bind to a therapeutic target protein and are thus potential new drugs. Initial new binders are called “hits”; hits can then be optimized into “leads” for further development into bona fide drugs. Combinatorial chemistry strategies depend on the size and diversity of the library to be designed, the availability and cost of the reagents (building blocks), and the type of chemical syntheses being attempted. In general, two forms of combinatorial library synthesis exist, “liquid-phase” synthesis and “solid-phase” synthesis; in the latter the chemistries are performed with one or more of the reagents attached to an inert solid support such as a bead or column. Each of the two methods of library synthesis has its own advantages and disadvantages; Liquid-phase synthesis allows many more standard chemistries to be performed (most chemical synthesis steps have been developed for individual compound synthesis in the liquid phase); however, the resultant library is necessarily a mixture of compounds within the liquid, and deconvolution strategies must be applied to identify individual compounds from the combinatorial mixture. Solid-phase synthesis has the advantage that individual compounds are spatially separated during synthesis; however, novel chemistries must be developed in order to be useable in the solid phase.