The prestigious Bio-IT World Best Practices award has been granted to the European Lead Factory

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Dear Colleague,

Bio-IT World Best Practices award
The prestigious Bio-IT World Best Practices award has been granted to the European Lead Factory (ELF). It was honoured for its Honest Data Broker (HDB) implementation of the BIOVIA ScienceCloud platform.

European Lead Factory successfully creates ‘drug-like’ hit compounds
Just a few months after its inclusion for drug target screening, one of the first compounds synthesised within the European Lead Factory was identified as a ‘drug-like’ hit. The compounds were synthesised by the Public Chemistry Consortium, based on library proposals from academic groups and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe.

EU Lead Factory Animations
The 1.5-minutes animations explain the EU Lead Factory concept and why this is a ‘must-have opportunity’ to boost a scientist’s career in drug discovery.

Knowledge-sharing at the PostDoc Learnings and Achievements meeting
Knowledge-sharing and education are key features of the European Lead Factory. Twice a year, chemistry PostDocs from within the consortium get the opportunity to present their research at the PostDoc Learnings and Achievements meeting.

EU Lead Factory discussed in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry issue
The journal ‘Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry‘ has published a special issue on emerging approaches for the design and synthesis of small molecule libraries. Including 13 EU Lead Factory manuscripts, the European Lead Factory is strongly represented, demonstrating its high innovative character. All articles are available as open access publications.

Dr. Stefan Jaroch introduced as new Project Coordinator
During the European Lead Factory General Assembly meeting held on 26-27 March 2015 in Germany/Dortmund, Stefan Jaroch was introduced as the new project coordinator. Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis (Chemistry) and Dr. Ton Rijnders (Biology) remain in charge.

Meet the EU Lead Factory
Collaboration is the central theme of the EU Lead Factory. The project is designed to provide best-in-class resources and funding-in-kind to academics or SMEs who are working on promising drug targets or compound libraries. Any European researcher from academia or SMEs can submit a library proposal for us to develop or submit a drug target and associated assay for us to screen with no upfront costs.

What’s in for you when submitting library design proposals to the ELF?
Use the whole ELF infrastructure for free (chemistry software tools, expert man power, screening facilities, etc.)
Have your novel library proposals assessed, validated and commented by the Library Selection Committee, a group of eight experienced synthetic and medicinal chemists all bound by confidentiality
Get a financial reward: Successful library proposal contributions will be rewarded with up to Euro 5.000,- each*

What criteria are used to assess your proposal?
Library Design Proposals will be assessed against six criteria:

• Molecular properties – the drug-relevant molecular properties with preferred clogP < 4
• Structural features – structural features that may constitute a liability in screening compounds
• Novelty – novelty of the proposed compounds by comparison with a reference set of commercially-available and patented compounds
• Diversity potential – value of the proposed approach for the synthesis of ideally more than 500 final compounds
• Synthetic tractability – the likely synthetic accessibility by consortium partners of the compound based on the precedent provided Innovative library design – the rationale that has been used for the design of the compound
• Innovative library design – the rationale that has been used for the design of the compound

Get started with the ELF!
Submit your scaffold proposal at: https://www.europeanleadfactory.eu/