Objective

The National Phenotypic Screening Centre (NPSC) was created with £8M of Scottish government investment and launched in 2015 with labs in three top-tier UK Universities: Dundee, Edinburgh and Oxford. A key aim of the centre is to redress the balance in drug discovery away from target-based approaches by focussing efforts towards advanced phenotypic screening, leveraging the latest developments in human biology (such as 3D models, organoids, iPSC-derived models and CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering) within an industry-standard high-throughput screening environment. We recently announced the Phenomics Discovery Initiative (PDi) – a pre-competitive consortium open to Pharma/Biotech where we use our academic and clinical network to source, develop and screen novel complex disease-relevant phenotypic assays. Janssen/J&J is PDi’s founding member.