FAQ - General

The EU Lead Factory is an open innovation platform for drug discovery, funded under the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and managed by an international consortium of currently 20 partners. Those partners include eight members of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), and many different academic institutions, SMEs, and a foundation.\

The goal of the European Lead Factory is to boost drug discovery by bridging the gap between interesting biology (targets and phenotypes) and interesting chemistry (potential hit compounds). The ultimate deliverable is to provide the highest quality lead candidates to stimulate drug discovery programmes, that can result in novel treatment options for patients. As a unique public-private partnership, the European Lead Factory is well-positioned to provide best-in-class resources and services to academic researchers, SMEs, Charities, and Foundations that are working on promising drug targets and/or phenotypes. Find out more about our goals.

There are currently two options to collaborate with the European Lead Factory: (1) by making use of our services and gaining access to our screening platform and compound collection via the charity funded screening route, or (2) by entering into partnering discussions on programmes that are available for partnering (read more here). Being a dynamic partnership, these options might change in the future, and new opportunities may open. If you would like to be kept up-to-date, please subscribe to our Newsletter. You can also always contact us directly at the programme office.

Until January 2022 it was possible to submit proposals for screening programmes at the European Lead Factory. Currently, all the screening slots funded through our grant are allocated. As such, we cannot take on new screening proposals via this route. We can however take on screening programmes via the charity-funded screening route. This option, allows Charities and Foundations to gain access to the European Lead Factory assets and services against payment. If you are an investigator or a charity interested in this route, please send us an email.

Collaborating with the European Lead Factory means gaining access to a unique, high-quality compound collection, cutting-edge, industry-standard Ultra-High-Throughput and High Content Screening facilities, as well as links to experts in the drug discovery area, and the means to have your programme executed by highly skilled professionals from the European Lead Factory. All the work is performed under a well-defined legal framework and under the highest confidentiality. Programme owners that collaborate with the European Lead Factory can decide how they would like to take their results forward (see rights and obligations). The results of programmes previously executed at the European Lead Factory are increasingly being made public (find out more here and view recent publications).

The European Lead Factory compound library has been established from a unique and diverse set of sources. Over 300,000 proprietary compounds are provided by the eight pharmaceutical partners in the consortium. The European Lead Factory has built a further collection of around 200,000 compounds, which have also been added to the compound library. The final result is the current library of approximately 535,000 active compounds. Before compounds are accepted into the collection, they have to comply with certain criteria (such as purity requirements, not being commercially available elsewhere, etc) to keep the collection unique, and of high quality.

The European Lead Factory has experience with targets and phenotypes across all disease areas, including oncology, immunology, cardiovascular diseases, CNS, metabolic diseases, infectious diseases (including AMR) and neglected tropical diseases. Find out more here and please contact us directly if you would like to know more about the possibilities in your area of interest.

The labs within the European Lead Factory have Biosafety level 2.

The European Lead Factory executes a wide range of small molecule hit discovery activities to identify novel starting points for drug discovery. Typically, activities in a screening programme involve feasibility testing, optimisation and miniaturization of primary and follow-up assay cascade including biophysical assay development, ultra-high throughput- or high content screening, hit confirmation and triaging experiments including target engagement profiling, cheminformatics and hit prioritization, resynthesis and reconfirmation of up to 15 most promising hits, and compound management. All experiments and results are described in the so-called Qualified Hit List report and handed over to the programme owner/client at the end of a programme.

The Pivot Park Screening Centre (PPSC) based in Oss, the Netherlands, provides automated cellular and biochemical primary and follow up assay development, optimisation, miniaturization and automation, and ultra-High Throughput Screening (HTS) services. The National Phenotypic Screening Centre (NPSC) in Dundee, UK, provides automated, high content, phenotypic screening (HCS) services. Compound management, development and testing of the biophysical assays, and analytical experiments are performed by BioAscent in Newhouse, UK. Four different medicinal chemistry companies (Edelris, Sygnature, Symeres and Taros) take care of the resynthesis activities of the most promising hit compounds. These partners also have the capacity for hit optimisation activities. If proteins need to be produced, the University of Oxford, UK can perform this activity. Foundation Lygature, in the Netherlands, coordinates all activities and is involved in contract discussions and the delivery of the final Qualified Hit List report.

Ultra-high throughput screening is performed on the full European Lead Factory compound library of over 500,000 compounds (find out more about the details of the compound library in this paper, published in 2021). High content screening is performed on a subset of 50,000 compounds.

The compounds in the ELF compound library are not available for virtual screening.

We are currently not looking for new compounds to be added to our library. This might change in the future. If you wish to be kept up to date, please subscribe to our Newsletter.

Programmes that are open to partnering opportunities are listed here. Please contact the programme office and indicate which programme you are interested in, and we will follow up accordingly.