 Following the success with epitope tagging, Wigler and collaborator Joe Sorge patented methods for the creating libraries of genes encoding diverse families of antibody molecules.The concept of antibody libraries is most often combined with the method of phage display used in development of antibody-based therapeutics.In the early 1990s, Wigler and collaborator W. Clark Still at Columbia University developed the first method for encoding combinatorial chemical synthesis, a method for using gas chromatography tags to record reaction "history" while building vast libraries of chemical compounds.