Objective

The European Lead Factory has been designed to create unrivalled opportunities for the discovery of new drug lead molecules by giving academics and SMEs access to an ‘industry-like’ discovery platform. Seven pharmaceutical companies have joined forces and contributed compounds from their proprietary collections to the Joint European Compound Library. Scientists with innovative biology targets and chemistry scaffold owners are welcome to participate in the European Lead Factory (ELF). All HTS campaigns for the ELF are performed at the Pivot Park Screening Centre in Oss, The Netherlands. As of March 2017, more than 55 full-deck HTS campaigns have been completed. These cover a wide range of target classes, including a high proportion of more demanding classes like ion channels, transcription factors and protein-protein interactions. Almost all HTS assays have been successfully miniaturized to 1536 format in order to perform them in a cost-efficient manner. The high productivity has been possible thanks to the implementation of industry-standard workflows and efficient interaction with target-owners across Europe. A robustness set containing “clean” and “nuisance” compounds has been implemented to guide assay design. The large number of projects, many involving challenging innovative targets, has led to unique experience in the design of deselection and orthogonal assays for following up the HTS campaigns. As a result, high quality hits are delivered to the target owners.