Project information
Ensuring long-term sustainability of chemical biology services within Europe and beyond (EU-OPENSCREEN-DRIVE)

EU-OPENSCREEN, the European Research Infrastructure of Open Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology, builds a distributed
organization comprising national screening and chemistry facilities, a common database, and a central headquarter that manages
the joint compound collection and coordinates project flow and training. It will provide world-class services to academia and
industry in the fields of small molecule screening and medicinal chemistry. EU-OPENSCREEN developed its concept and business
plan during the preparatory phase of the project and has submitted its Stage 2 ERIC application to the European Commission (EC). In
2018, EU-OPENSCREEN is expected to start its ERIC operations with 7 founding member states. EU-OPENSCREEN strives for
embracing the rich chemical knowledge of Europe and enabling systematic studies of the bioactivities of a larger collection of
compounds leading to ground‐breaking insights into cellular and organismal metabolic or signalling pathways. After careful
consideration of IPR from all stakeholders involved, all results will eventually become available to the public. EU-OPENSCREEN will
thereby also play an increasingly important role in facilitating the drug discovery process in Europe. In addition, it also has a great
potential for innovative development of biomarkers and other diagnostics. By carefully considering the recommendations of the
Long-term Sustainability Action Plan of the EC and ESFRI, EU-OPENSCREEN will utilize EU-OPENSCREEN-DRIVE to specifically promote
measures for i) widening awareness of academia and industry for its services and data, ii) growing capacity and competence in its
field across Europe, and iii) completing the management processes needed for a large distributed infrastructure. EU-OPENSCREENDRIVE
will further help the EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC to deliver its added-value via constant re-use of generated data and tools by users
across the globe and to support the competitiveness of European life science industries.