European Lead Factory compound library

In 2019, the European Lead Factory (ELF) established the current compound library, the ESCulab Compound Collection (ECC). The collection evolved from the Joint European Compound Library (JECL), which includes compounds from the Public Compound Collection (PCC) and participating large pharmaceutical companies. Two new partners, Grünenthal and Institut de Recherche Servier, also added compounds to the ECC, making the collection even more robust. 

In a paper published in Drug Discovery Today, partners of the ELF detail the properties of the updated compound collection, showing that it is an attractive and highly diverse compound set that is complementary to commercial screening libraries.

To date, more than 300,000 compounds from the original pharmaceutical companies have been added to the ECC, along with approximately 190,000 compounds from the PCC. Furthermore, Grünenthal and Institut de Recherche Servier have provided the ECC with around 50,000 new compounds not previously available to the European Lead Factory. This collaboration has resulted in a total of approximately 535,000 compounds in the ECC.

Compounds from EFPIA partners were selected for inclusion in the library based on stringent quality criteria, as well as on the prerequisite that they are unique and not commercially available. Efforts were also taken to increase diversity, resulting in a top-quality compound library.

Compounds from the PCC were synthesized based on innovative compound library proposals. Chemists in Europe were invited to submit their innovative ideas for novel compound libraries. The compounds from the selected library proposals were synthesized to industry standard, thus providing novel high-quality compounds to be added to the compound collection.

Sufficient library proposals were received to enable the completion of the PCC in 2018. The European Lead Factory thanks everyone for their great contributions.

Programmes for drug targets or phenotypes using a High Throughput Screening (uHTS) approach are screened against all compounds available in the ELF compound library. High content screening occurs on a 50,000-compound subset of the collection, that is scientifically representative of the full collection. Screening Centres within the ELF Consortium are given access to the compound library without requiring the disclosure of a compound structure. This approach guarantees confidentiality and allows a wide range of proprietary compounds to be screened against potential drug targets and phenotypes.

The compound library forms the core of the European Lead Factory. It contains a diverse range of unique and high-quality compounds that are synthetically controlled and make excellent starting points for drug discovery projects.