The interest of microwaves in drug discovery and multi-step synthesis is exposed with the aim of describing our strategy. These studies are connected with our work on the synthesis of original heterocyclic compounds with potential pharmaceutical value. Reactions in the presence of solvent and solvent-free synthesis can be realised under a variety of conditions; for some of these selected results are given, and where available, results from comparison with the same solvent-free conditions but with classical heating are given.