Utilizing diversity-oriented synthesis in antimicrobial drug discovery.

The development of resistance to existing antimicrobials has created a threat to human health that is not being addressed through our current drug pipeline. Limitations with the use of commercial vendor libraries and natural products have created a need for new types of small molecules to be screened in antimicrobial assays. Diversity oriented synthesis (DOS) is a strategy for the efficient generation of compound collections with a high degree of structural diversity. Diversity-oriented synthesis molecules occupy the middle ground of both complexity and efficiency of synthesis between natural products and commercial libraries. In this review we focus upon the use of diversity-oriented synthesis compound collections for the discovery of new antimicrobial agents.