Abstract

EU-OPENCREEN is a joint publicly funded European research initiative of compound screening platforms and medicinal chemistry groups at universities and public research institutions. Currently supported by eight member states, EU-OPENSCREEN develops novel chemical „tool“ compounds in collaboration with interested scientists from all disciplines of the life sciences. Providing open access to its collection of 140,000 small chemical compounds and to its partner sites’ expertise, technical capabilities and resources, EU-OPENSCREEN facilitates high quality basic and applied research in chemical biology. EU-OPENSCREEN will also offer open access to the new European Chemical Biology Database (ECBD), which is a platform for the integration, annotation, standardization, organization and analysis of data/metadata produced within the EU-OPENSCREEN network. Moreover, long-term sustainability of EU-OPENSCREEN operations will be supported by the newly funded EU-OPENSCREEN-DRIVE project, which promotes measures for growing capacity and scientific competence in its field across Europe, for widening awareness for its services and data among academia and industry, and for completing the management processes needed for a large distributed infrastructure.