A great deal of effort is currently going into the design of combinatorial libraries. Published approaches are generally "optimal" in that each best satisfies the target objective function it employs. Relative efficiencies can be compared in such cases, but it is often difficult to compare libraries generated by different methods or even by different parameterizations of the same method. This is particularly true once it is appreciated that attributes other than molecular diversity are important. This paper will discuss several ways in which library designs can be meaningfully compared to one another, visually as well as numerically.
combinatorial library design; molecular diversity; representativeness; OptiSim; dissimilarity selection
