Celebrating a decade of the ELF at the final Consortium Meeting

Background to the initiative and overall objectives

The ELF was first established in 2013 when seven large pharmaceutical companies came together to combine their compound collections and open them up to academia and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working on innovative targets and searching for drug discovery starting points. During the first phase of the ELF (2013-2018), a complimentary compound collection was synthesised, based on innovative ideas from the medicinal chemistry community. The goal of the ELF was to give scientists access to an industry-standard screening infrastructure and allow them to screen their drug targets and phenotypes of interest against one large compound library composed of unique high-quality compounds with drug-like properties. Funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI, now IHI), the ELF was born as a shared platform for open innovation in drug discovery – a first of its kind in Europe. 

In 2019, IMI-2 funding was secured for the second phase, under the grant name ESCulab (European Screening Centre; unique library for attractive biology). The goal was to harness the impressive ELF ecosystem and engage with new life science hubs in academia and industry to source and boost even more innovative biological discoveries. An important new addition was the inclusion of phenotypic screening programmes – a powerful approach to identifying new chemical starting points for drug discovery, offering the potential to uncover new targets and pathways underpinning disease-related biology. 

Under the second project term, the aim was to capitalise on the investments made and continue the mission of developing new medicines for unmet medical needs. The consortium implemented a more strategic approach to its portfolio management, not only by looking at the ‘best proposals’ but also the spread of proposals across different therapeutic areas. The interest lay in securing a good balance of projects that were selected based first and foremost on patient benefit, but also on scientific impact, risk diversity, and economic potential. 

After more than a decade of successful collaboration, the ELF initiative officially comes to a close on 30 November 2023. 

Looking back at a decade of collaboration 

During the course of the two-day meeting at the Servier premises in Paris-Saclay, in-depth discussions were held on the progress made over the past year and the impacts of the ELF as a whole. 

“A decade of the ELF has resulted in tangible assets and impactful output,” noted ELF Coordinator, Jon de Vlieger (Lygature) in his presentation providing first-time disclosures on the results of the decade-long collaboration. “With the contributions of many partners, we have successfully shown that collaboration with different organizations through a central core team can create waves and achieve results that translate into real impact. As drug discovery projects typically take 7-10 years to move from early hit to clinical implementation, these waves of impact will continue to become visible in the coming years, bringing clinically relevant compounds to patients in need.”

The results achieved so far were demonstrated in the presentations of various ELF partners during the final consortium meeting. These included Symeres, Pivot Park Screening Centre, BioAscent, Merck Healthcare KGaA, and the Medicines for Malaria Venture. The partners showcased what the impact of participating in the ELF initiative has meant for their respective organisations, whether it led to new customers, the ability to expand services, identify new lead compounds or attain access to novel chemical space. 

The compelling stories of ELF Programme Owners Maria Kuzikov (Fraunhofer Institute), Lina Riegler-Berket (University of Graz) and Andy McElroy (The Research Network Ltd) – who had their drug discovery programmes executed in collaboration with the ELF – were shared in Paris. These ELF collaborators have successfully progressed their work in the fields of pandemic preparedness, tuberculosis drug development, and pain relief, and are further proof of the impact of the partnership.  

“We are really happy with the results we achieved for our SARS-CoV-2 programme. Our collaboration with the ELF led to the identification of new chemical scaffolds to develop reliable SARS-CoV-2 Plpro inhibitors. The work was fast and efficient, resulting in new structures and starting points that we otherwise would not have discovered. We’re delighted to have secured follow-up funding to further progress our work.” Maria Kuzikov.

“It’s been fantastic working with the ELF in all respects. The partnership is an extremely professional initiative. The Research Network has been a returning customer with four programmes run through the ELF. This work has allowed us to identify novel leads for three of our projects and we’ve reached the step of successfully moving one towards a new drug development candidate.” Andy McElroy[1].

Wrapping up a successful partnership

The results of 11 years of the European Lead Factory, as presented during the meeting in Paris, have shown that the initiative has greatly contributed to the advancement of new drug discoveries and overall education about early drug discovery. These results have benefitted academia, SMEs, larger industry and society as a whole. In addition, the individual projects will hopefully lead to new treatments for patients with high medical need. The project has been a true example of successful public-private collaboration, bringing together large multinational pharmaceutical companies with SMEs and academic groups to drive the development of new medical solutions. 

Although the core activities of the consortium will no longer proceed, the impacts of the partnership will continue to become apparent over the coming years. The final consortium meeting provided a timely moment to look back on a successful, long-running collaboration with a wealth of knowledge gained and a host of tangible results to be proud of.   

The final ELF report, detailing the results and impacts of the partnership over the full 11 years, will soon be published and made available through the dedicated ELF communication channels. 

[1]Read more in this in-depth interview with Andy McElroy