Open Access to Drug Discovery

We are putting on a showcasing event to provide insight to the vast array of open access opportunities available to researchers who are wishing to start/progress on a drug discovery pathway. Short presentations from AstraZeneca, BioAscent, ChEMBL, EU OPENSCREEN, GSK, J&Ji and UCB will describe chemical databases and tools, compound libraries, compound screening services and antibody development opportunities which are available.

Lunch will be provided and a chance to network and meet the representatives from these organisations. One-to-one appointments can also be made for later in the day, to discuss a particular project in private. If you wish to book a meeting please contact Cathy Boucher

AstraZeneca have a number of offerings under their OpenInnovation platform, including their Clinical Compound Bank, Preclinical Toolbox and Target Innovation. These are principally available for research within certain health areas.

BioAscent’s compound cloud provides easy access to over 125,000 lead-like and drug-like compounds, for a modest price.

ChEMBL is an extensive small molecule database, which contains bioactivity data against drug targets. It focuses on all aspects of drug discovery and contains information on over 1.4 million compounds and has 12 million records of their effects on biological systems. A demonstration of the database will be provided on the day.

EU OPENSCREEN is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium founded in 2017 by seven European Countries. It integrates high capacity screening platforms throughout Europe, which jointly use a rationally selected compound collection, comprising of 140,000 commercial and proprietary compounds collected from European chemists. Although the UK is not a member state, University of Cambridge researchers are still able to access services from EU-OPENSCREEN.

GSK have a number of compound sets which are openly available to researchers. In addition there are other compounds which could be made available through managed collaborations.

J&Ji are looking to form collaborations with researchers working on health areas of interest to them.

Through their Technology Platform Access Programme (TPAP), UCB are offering the opportunity to work with their automated antibody discovery platform to develop therapeutic antibodies.

In addition, both AstraZeneca and UCB offer similar programmes which are funded by the MRC. Researchers apply directly to the MRC and if successful, may additionally get a limited amount of funding to support proof of concept experiments.