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About us

We were an IMI-funded public-private partnership, working to deliver innovative drug discovery starting points. The project came to an end on 30 November 2023.

The European Lead Factory (ELF) was established in 2013, when several pharmaceutical companies, universities and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) joined forces to create a high-quality compound library, and screening infrastructure referred to as the European Screening Centre.

Combining the best of several worlds – the expertise, experience and state-of-the-art techniques of industry; the innovative strength of academic institutions; and the agility and creativity of SMEs – the ultimate goal of the ELF has been to boost early drug discovery and seed new hit-to-lead programmes.

The animation below explains the concept behind the ELF.

All our work took place under a well-defined legal framework, with balanced rights and obligations.

ELF Assets

As of 2019, the current ELF compound library consisted of approximately 535,000 compounds. This includes >350,000 EFPIA compounds, supplemented by around approximately 190,000 compounds of the Public Compound Collection, developed by leading chemistry SMEs and academic groups. The European Screening Centre harbours skilled experts in the field of assay development, Ultra-High-Throughput & High Content Screening, hit finding, and compound logistics, while our four participating medicinal chemistry SMEs take care of the resynthesis activities for reconfirmation. Finally, a bespoke informatics system, the Honest Data Broker, has been developed to help manage the intellectual property of the contributed assets to enable the development of resulting leads.

Growing the ELF portfolio

Over the last 10 years, European researchers and SMEs with well-developed screening assays were invited to submit their screening proposals to the ELF. Successful applicants gained access to an industry-standard drug discovery platform in the hunt for new compounds to progress their research or develop new drugs, with all screening costs covered by IMI funding.

Achievements to date

Since 2013, more than 200 drug discovery programmes have been run at the ELF. These high-quality programmes have led to a balanced portfolio of innovative disease targets, the results of which are increasingly being made public, indicating the long-lasting impact that the ELF can generate.

Over 100 publications have come out of ELF collaborations and more than 20 programmes are now available for partnering. Spin-off companies Scandicure and Keapstone Therapeutics were created based on work performed at the ELF, and most recently, the ELF has helped identify two drug candidates for cancer treatment that have now progressed to phase 1 clinical trial testing. Furthermore, work at the ELF has contributed to the discovery of a new class of drug that has the potential to reverse antibiotic resistance for conditions such as pneumonia and sepsis.

The various testimonials of ELF partners and collaborators give a taste of how the partnership has helped push their work forward. A comprehensive overview of the impact of the ELF was published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

In February 2022, ELF closed its open calls for screening proposals and the project officially came to a close on 30 November 2023.

 

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