Successful drug research depends on adequate links between therapeutic benefits for the treatment of a disease, pertinent biological targets and suitable chemical compounds. The pharmacochemistry group at EPGL is active in the development of virtual and experimental methods to enhance these links following a general hit and lead generation strategy to reduce large chemically diverse databases to lead collections. This strategy is based on a careful definition of its numerous steps and on a series of key validation processes. Particular attention is devoted to identify and improve the usefulness of virtual screening techniques widely used in drug development. The guidelines proposed here to use the best validated tools in the most suitable order will help the medicinal chemist to approach his dream, namely to be faster in the design of better and safer drug candidates