Assets
European Screening Centre
State-of-the-art drug discovery facilities and dedicated expert personnel
The European Lead Factory's European Screening Centre (ESC) provides ultra-high throughput screening (uHTS) and high content screening (HCS) activities that serve the wider European scientific community. Some of Europe's most advanced compound management, screening, and hit characterization capabilities are provided by the ESC.
Managed by Lygature, the ESC offers world-class compound storage-and-retrieval, screening and laboratory facilities, as well as input from highly experienced specialists. The aim is to support all those taking part in the European Lead Factory project, and to ensure the best possible research outcomes by fully exploiting the European Lead Factory compound library.
Compound management
World-class compound logistics facilities of 1,100m2 are provided by BioAscent Discovery Ltd. using their automated compound store in Newhouse, Scotland. Both solids and DMSO solutions can be stored, retrieved and delivered with minimum turnaround time. The facilities were formerly part of Merck Sharp & Dohme research labs, and the facility’s highly skilled scientists and technicians have been retained. BioAscent is responsible for collection, storage, distribution, tracking and high-throughput screening (HTS) logistics (i.e. hit picking and support of follow up studies). All of the compound management services and beyond are also available for outsourcing.
Ultra High-Throughput Screening (uHTS)
The Pivot Park Screening Centre (PPSC) is well named because it acts as a pivot for screening activities. Located in Oss in the Netherlands, PPSC is dedicated to open innovation and housing of the latest generation robotics. It also provides automated cellular and biochemical in-vitro screening expertise. The centre builds on decades of experience in assay development, automation and screening. Opportunities for networking and collaboration are extensive.
High Content Screening (HCS)
High content screening takes place at National Phenotypic Screening Centre (NPSC) at the University of Dundee – one of ELF’s academic partners. The NPSC provides the capabilities, assay infrastructure, expertise, data handling, and analysis for HCS assays within the program.
While HTS provides an enormous amount of information and value in looking at specific targets, HCS is used to analyse the effects of compounds and gene-based perturbations, looking at how those compounds affect cells or various biological models of cells and tissues. The general approach involves setting up a system that’s based on growing cells, either in a 2-D model layer (on a flat surface) or a larger 3-D structure that mimics the properties of tissues. Various imaging assays are then used to measure the effects of compounds in a way that reflects their activities in biological mechanisms for targeting. For more information, read this interview with Professor Jason Swedlow, head of the NPSC.
Hit characterization
Now part of BioAscent, the prior Newhouse group of the University of Dundee provides biological data, medicinal chemistry, informatics analysis and modelling to the screening programmes of the European Lead Factory. The group offers extensive knowledge of the drug discovery cycle over a wide range of target classes based on many years of experience in pharma, biotech and academic drug discovery.
The Biology, Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry teams ensure that Qualified Hit Lists (QHLs) are of the highest quality and value to target owners, with tailored activities for each programme. Pharmaceutical industry-standard facilities combined with some of the latest technologies and expertise supports hit identification and follow-up with biochemical and biophysical data, and in collaboration with the SMEs Edelris, Symeres, Sygnature Discovery and Taros, resynthesis and hit confirmation data post-QHL.
Protein production
The Biotechnology group of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) at the University of Oxford provides protein production to the European Lead Factory programmes. The group has vast experience in expressing and purifying human proteins for structural and functional analyses using both prokaryotic and eukaryotic expression systems. This paved the way for an unparalleled track record of 800 high-resolution human protein structures solved and made available in the public domain for the past 11 years.
As a consequence, the SGC is globally recognised as a centre of reference for protein production and structural biology of novel, medically relevant human proteins, unveiling pioneering drug target families such as the bromodomain epigenetics regulators and several novel protein kinases.