The objective in medicinal chemistry is to discover the compounds that offer the most potential as pharmaceutical products, and to move the most promising into the journey of the molecule towards commercialization. Confidently confirming the identity and quality of these new chemical entities is a major challenge, particularly when labs are asked to maximize throughput and efficiency, and to manage the increasing volumes of data generated.

Medicinal chemistry is also an iterative process that demands rapid turnaround times. High throughput chromatography and mass spectrometry, together with advanced data-handling software, has high standards to meet for drug discovery compound screening, identification, optimization, and physicochemical property profiling.

Waters' UPLC and UPC² technologies offer a sea change in capacity for medicinal chemistry laboratories.