Accelerating Chemical Tool Discovery by Academic Collaborative Models

The development of chemical tool compounds becomes increasingly important for chemical biology research projects in many disciplines of life sciences. In addition, they form essential parts in both academic and industrial drug discovery efforts. The required expertise and technology platforms for the identification and optimization of these potent and target-selective small molecules often exceed the capabilities of academic groups and smaller companies. Over the years, several initiatives were created all over the world which address this issue by either creating networks or consortia of academic institutes, public-private partnerships with industry, or even dedicated new research infrastructures for chemical biology. Several of these organizations and their different access models will be described. We will focus in particular on the model of EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC, a new European Research Infrastructure which was founded in 2018 and consists of more than 20 partner institutes from eight countries