shared services for life-science

The majority of scientists in Europe, however, do not have access to suitable technology platforms and compound collections, which are generally expensive to purchase, operate and maintain. As a large-scale research infrastructure (RI) with an ‘open’ pre-competitive character, EU-OPENSCREEN will cost-effectively overcome this limitation by: involving and providing access to Europe’s leading screening platforms and chemistry groups; constructing a jointly used compound collection; and operating an open-access bioactivity database which will be accessible on a global basis.

The chemical compounds which will be developed in the framework of EU-OPENSCREEN have a number of key advantages and allow interrogation of complex biological processes that cannot be properly studied with traditional genetic approaches. They drive innovation as they help validate biological targets as ‘druggable’ (i.e. be modulated by chemical compounds) which makes them highly attractive starting points for further optimisation into marketable medicines or crop-protective agents by pharmaceutical, AgriScience and biotechnology companies.  

Access to the EU-OPENSCREEN expertise and resources is available to all researchers worldwide. EU-OPENSCREEN will represent a globally relevant resource and will attract users from a variety of scientific disciplines and geographical regions. The key users can be divided into three major user groups:

1. Assay providing users who will access the screening infrastructure: Researchers with a suitable, robust and screening compatible assay, interested in developing specific chemical compounds (i.e. inhibitor or activator) for their biological mechanism or pathway-of-interest to answer a biological question. In the first step, these assays are screened against the EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC compound collection; in the second step, the identified active compounds (‘hits’) are chemically optimised and translated into valuable tool compounds, which are made available to the broader scientific community.
2. Compound providing users who will donate compounds: Chemists who donate their compounds can use the EU-OPENSCREEN services to expose their compounds to a large number of screens, and thereby a wide range of biological targets. The unique value proposition for chemists is that the biological activities of their compounds will be described in-depth and that their compounds may be identified as active 'hit' compounds, thereby triggering new collaborations between chemistry and biology communities.
3. Database users who will access the EU-OPENSCREEN database: The open-access EU-OPENSCREEN database will serve as the publicly accessible database and collaborative data sharing environment for all EU-OPENSCREEN generated data. It is designed to support the requirements of both academia (encouraging exchange of knowledge) and industry (allowing suitable protection of IP).