News

Jeremy Davis is Head of Hit Discovery at UCB. He is based at the Slough research site in the UK and supports all New Chemical Entity (NCE) projects across UCB’s three main global research sites in the UK, USA and Belgium.

After 11 years of intense collaboration, the European Lead Factory (ELF), a flagship pan-European early drug discovery project, is wrapping up its activities.

Dirk Finsinger is Director in Medicinal Chemistry at Merck Healthcare KGaA Darmstadt, Germany. He has significant experience in project work in Oncology and Immunology, increasingly directing his attention to the early pipeline, specifically hit identification techniques, screening approaches and the respective relevant chemical space.

Phil Gribbon is Head of Discovery Research at the Fraunhofer Institute of Translational Medicine and Pharmacology in Hamburg, Germany. He has worked in many research collaborations and has extensive experience with screening, including assay development and computationally informed drug design.

Sara Brown is a clinical academic dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh whose research focuses on how genetic factors influence predisposition to the inflammatory skin disease atopic eczema and associated conditions. The Brown Lab uses human skin organoid models to investigate the role of molecular genetic factors in health and disease.

In June, European Lead Factory (ELF) Consortium member, Vera Nies (Lygature), attended the 2023 BIO International Convention in Boston.

The European Lead Factory builds on an established partnership between public and private organisations, designed to promote innovation by ensuring in-depth collaboration and honest brokerage.  

Interested in learning more about the European Lead Factory (ELF) and meeting with members of our team? We will be attending the following meetings and hope to connect with you.  

Two publications are out based on the exploitation of results coming out of the screening of the ELF Compound Library and the generation of the Public Compound Collection.

European Lead Factory (ELF) partner, Pivot Park Screening Centre (PPSC), has announced the launch of a new Assay Development Fund that aims to give Dutch scientists a major boost – helping them achieve new scientific breakthroughs and create a more competitive drug discovery landscape.

Andy McElroy is the founder and CEO of The Research Network (TRN), an associate network of specialists focused on enabling drug discovery and development. A chemist by training with various roles in drug discovery, Andy has run several screening programmes with the European Lead Factory (ELF).

Maria Paola Costi is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Modena in Italy. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Maria also runs a research group working on the development of antiparasitic and anticancer agents.

An important European Lead Factory (ELF) asset is our Public Compound Collection (PCC), a collection of around 190,000 compounds that was designed based on crowdsourced chemistry proposals from academic and SME experts from a

Saturday, 4 February, is World Cancer Day. This year, we draw attention to the power of working together to close the gap in cancer care.

Joen Luirink is an Associate Professor and Head of the Molecular Microbiology Department at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam. Joen's research interests lie in protein trafficking in bacteria and vaccine development. He told us about his experience of working with the European Lead Factory (ELF) and what he has learned so far in the journey.