News

Any European researcher can submit a design proposal of a chemical library that can be synthesised by the European Lead Factory and can subsequently be incorporated in the Joint European Compound Library (JECL). The project Library Design Committee rates the designs on six scientific criteria and determines the technical maturity level of the proposals. Budapest-based ChemPass ltd rose to the challenge and recently received the highest monetary award of 5.000 Euros for their library design proposal.

On the 25-26 April the European Lead Factory (ELF) Stakeholder Meeting and 5^th General Assembly took place close to Heathrow/Windsor, UK. With an exciting agenda focussing on four years of successful collaboration, the impact of the European Lead Factory and the future of drug discovery, the meeting was considered a great success by all participants.

In a world-first type of collaboration, Parkinson’s UK and the University of Sheffield have launched a joint venture biotech company, Keapstone Therapeutics. Parkinson’s UK has allocated 1 million GBP over the next sixteen months to further develop compounds that boost the internal cellular defence mechanisms against oxidative stress. These compounds were discovered by IMI’s European Lead Factory.

The European Lead Factory (ELF) is boosting the discovery of new drugs by making high throughput screening and a quality compound library available to academia and biotech’s. To be eligible, the proposed project has to meet certain conditions. For example, the project should be considered as innovative and it should be possible to optimize the associated assay for high throughput screening.