New consortium EUbOPEN will provide tools to unlock disease biology
66 million euros to generate open-access chemical tools
2020/06/10
8 June 2020 – Congratulation to Stefan Knapp and colleagues from the Goethe University, who just received a prestigious IMI grant for a large-scale effort to develop an openly accessible chemogenomic compound libraries, chemical probes and validation assays. The newly formed public-private partnership “Enabling and Unlocking biology in the OPEN” (EUbOPEN) was launched on 1 May 2020, with a total budget of 65.8 million euros covered by a grant from the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and cash/in-kind contributions from EFPIA companies and IMI Associated Partners and contributions from partners outside of Europe.
Almost twenty years after deciphering the human genome, our understanding of human disease is still far from complete. One of the most powerful and versatile tools to better understand biology and disease-relevant processes is the use of well-characterized small chemical modulators of protein function. The new EUbOPEN consortium aims to develop high quality chemical tool compounds for 1,000 proteins (one third of the druggable proteins in the human body). It will enable unencumbered access to these research tools, thereby empowering academia and industry alike to explore disease biology and unlock the discovery of new drug targets and treatments.
EUbOPEN activities at Goethe-University will be carried out at SGC Frankfurt laboratories at the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences and the faculties of medicine, biochemistry, chemistry and pharmacy.
‘By the end of the project, we will have created the largest and most deeply characterised collection of chemical modulators of protein function that is openly available’, says Stefan Knapp, CSO of the SGC site in Frankfurt, and coordinator of the project. ‘The chemical tool sets and associated data will be a tremendous resource for academic science leading to the discovery of new biology and of novel disease modulating targets for the development of new medicines.’
EUbOPEN will develop these compounds using new technologies and test them in well-characterized, disease-relevant human tissue assays in the areas of immunology, oncology and neuroscience. The project outputs, including chemogenomic library sets, chemical probes, assay protocols and associated research data will be made openly available to the research community without restriction.
The EUbOPEN project will form the foundation for future global efforts to generate chemical modulators for the entire druggable proteome and the developed new technologies will significantly shorten the lead optimization processes. The sustainability of the resources the project will be ensured through many partnerships for example with chemical vendors and biotech companies as well as online database providers.
https://www.eubopen.org/
EUbOPEN
The EUbOPEN consortium comprises 22 different partner organizations, including universities, research institutes, European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) members, and one small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). Goethe University Frankfurt and Boehringer Ingelheim are jointly leading the EUbOPEN consortium. Other partner organizations are Bayer AG, Diamond Light Source, EMBL-EBI, ETH Zürich, Fraunhofer IME, Georg-Speyer-Haus, Karolinska Institutet, Leiden University Medical Center, McGill University, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Pfizer, Royal Institute of Technology, Servier, the Structural Genomics Consortium, Takeda, University of Dundee, University of North Carolina, University of Oxford, and University of Toronto.
https://www.eubopen.org/
Read the full press release from (Link GUF and EUbOPEN website).
IMI
The IMI is Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe. IMI is a joint undertaking between the European Union and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
(For other announcements)
SGC Frankfurt
The SGC (Structural Genomics Consortium) is a not-for-profit, public-private partnership with the directive to carry out basic science of relevance to drug discovery. The SGC Frankfurt is focused on the development of selective inhibitors (chemical probes), which help us to better understand the biological role of key signaling molecules and may serve as a starting point to target these proteins in different diseases. The SGC Frankfurt is committed to sharing its research in the spirit of Open Science.
https://www.sgc-frankfurt.de/
Tweet form @thesgcfrankfurt
Proud to announce @goetheuni and partners just launched a 65.8 million euro @IMI_JU project @EUbOPEN to generate open-access chemogenomics compounds and chemical probes!
Great collaborations coming ahead!
