Future considerations in HTS: the acute effect of chronic dilemmas

Abstract Today, in the area of Biomolecular Screening, it would seem that `something better' in terms of instrumentation or assay technology, is emerging almost every week. From the standpoint of planning, this presents significant challenges to decide whether to integrate the `latest and greatest' advance, whether to wait just a few months for the next advance, which may make the current advance obsolete, or perhaps to maintain the status quo. This decision would be considerably simpler if there was a clear, optimal strategy for identifying and selecting lead compounds. This article attempts to look at this issue from the perspective of discussing the pros and cons to several approaches to lead discovery.