Friday, 10 May 2013 18:22

Major Lab Project “EU-Openscreen” supported by German Ministry of Education and Research Featured

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has added the major project EU-Openscreen to its “Roadmap for Research Infrastructures”. Its task will be to provide researchers with biologically active substances from a repository of substances.

EU-Openscreen provides a European infrastructure using open screening platforms for chemical biology. It integrates high- throughput screening methods, chemical libraries, chemical resources for hit discovery and optimisation, cheminformatics support, a database of screening results, assay protocols, and chemical information.

The search for new drugs and substance properties  requires a systematic screening of large numbers of chemicals with the help of sophisticated  biological test systems (assays). However, as this involves considerable investments in cutting-edge technology, financial expenses and experienced staff, EU-Openscreen is to provide such services centrally.

The goal of EU-Openscreen is to network European research laboratories. Several hundred thousand chemical substances are to be assessed with regard to their biological effects, and the relevant data must be interconnected. The substances could thus serve as tools for the clarification of biological processes and as starting points for the development of new products, such as pharmaceutical drugs or pesticides. Screening results, assay protocols and chemical data will be compiled in a central database and made available to the general public.

EU-Openscreen is based on the German network ChemBioNet and other existing national networks in 14 countries, and is connected to similar consortiums in the United States and Australia. The database is maintained by the European Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL-EBI) and interlinked with other life science databases.

Setup and networking will cost some 55 million euros. The project launch is planned for 2014.

More information:
(German) http://www.eu-openscreen.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/News__Press__Position_Papers/BMBF_WR/BMBF-Roadmap.pdf
Website: http://www.eu-openscreen.eu