That's pretty much how small-molecule drug development works. They have huge high-throughput screening machines to churn through libraries of millions of chemic

That's pretty much how small-molecule drug development works. They have huge high-throughput screening machines to churn through libraries of millions of chemicals, running assays to see whether they produce the desired results in vitro. Throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Once they get hits, they run more big assays, winnowing down likely tox issues or off-target effects, then try them in animal models, then eventually get to Phase I.