Book excerpt: High Throughput Analysis for Early Drug Discovery offers concise and unbiased presentations by synthetic and analytical chemists who have been involved in creating and moving the field of combinatorial chemistry into the academic and industrial mainstream. Since the synthetic method often dictates the appropriate types of analysis, each chapter or section begins with a description of the synthesis approach and its advantages. The description of various combinatorial and high-throughput parallel synthesis techniques provide a relevant point of entry for synthetic chemists who need to set up appropriate characterisation methods for his/her organisation. This is an invaluable resource for all organic and analytical chemists in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and biotechnology fields who are either involved in, or beginning to investigate combinatorial techniques to increase overall efficiency and productivity. First reference to focus on the analytical side of synthesis