The Novartis Compound Archive - From Concept to Reality

As HTS technologies come of age, pharmaceutical companies are focusing increasingly on the quality of their screening collections. Storage conditions and their influence on compound stability and solubility are debated intensely. At Novartis, a strategy was developed that is different to most other companies: (1) compounds unsuitable for storage in solution are excluded by computational methods; (2) compounds are stored at 4°C/20% relative humidity in a DMSO/water mixture to avoid freeze-thaw cycles and water uptake and to allow rapid plate replication; (3) resolubilisation of compounds at regular intervals.