EU‐OPENSCREEN: Novel chemical tool compounds for molecular biologists

Abstract

Small molecules that can be applied as chemical 'tool' compounds (or 'probes') have become indispensable in basic research for the elucidation of fundamental biological mechanisms. They act directly with the protein‐of‐interest and often allow for the interrogation of biological processes that cannot be properly studied with traditional genetic or RNA interference approaches.EU‐OPENSCREEN (www.eu‐openscreen.eu) is the largest emerging academic chemical biology research infrastructure initiative in Europe with the aim to collaboratively develop novel research tool compounds with independent cell biologists. As a joint effort of national networks in 16 European countries, EU‐OPENSCREEN offers access to high‐throughput screening platforms, chemistry services and a large compound collection. It welcomes molecular biologists who have a robust and suitable biological assay and are interested in collaboratively developing chemical tool compounds to validate their targets‐of‐interest. Selected assays are screened against a collection of more than 100,000 compounds, incl. confirmatory and counter screening, IC/EC50 determination, SAR (structure‐activity relationships) and QC of confirmed hit compounds.EU‐OPENSCREEN will start operations in late 2015, but it can already look back on a growing number of transnational activities: joint screening projects, exchange of local compound libraries, development of new design principles for its compound collection; exchange of experimental data through its pilot database etc.