BioCentury
ARTICLE | Company News

Edelris, Sygnature Discovery, Syncom B.V., Taros Chemicals GmbH & Co. KG, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Lundbeck, J&J, Mercachem B.V., Merck KGaA, Sanofi, Innovative Medi

February 25, 2013 8:00 AM UTC

The EU's IMI announced the launch of the European Lead Factory, an EU-wide public-private discovery partnership to accelerate early stage drug development. The five-year project comprises 30 partners and includes the creation of a small molecule library collection of up to 500,000 compounds. Seven member companies of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), coordinated by Bayer's Bayer Healthcare AG unit, will contribute about 300,000 compounds. The other participating EFPIA members are AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. subsidiary, H. Lundbeck, Merck KGaA, Sanofi and UCB. A group of academia and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will contribute about 200,000 compounds. The participating SMEs include Sygnature, Syncom, Edelris, Mercachem and Taros. The resulting Joint European Compound Collection will be accessible to project members as well as public organizations and SMEs with target proposals for drug screening. The consortium will also set up a European Screening Centre with compound logistics and high throughput screening with sites in Scotland and The Netherlands. The Scottish site is the BioCity Scotland research cluster in Lanarkshire, which will receive €19 million ($25.4 million) in funding from IMI and £3.5 million ($5.5 million) from the Scottish government. BioCity Scotland is a 75/25 JV between incubator BioCity Nottingham and science park Roslin BioCentre. BioCity's partner, University of Dundee, will place a team of scientists at the center to assist in screening activities. The Dutch site is the screening center at Pivot Park, a science park in Oss founded by Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK, Whitehouse Station, N.J.) with funding from the Dutch government. The Netherlands-based non-profit TI Pharma will head the consortium's screening efforts and facilitate overall scientific governance, while Taros will oversee the chemistry effort. ...