About
This consortium establishes a national academic infrastructure called NL-OPENSCREEN open to the Dutch life science community. Through NL-OPENSCREEN we will make small-molecule libraries and screening facilities available for high throughput and cell based testing against bio-molecular targets of scientific interest. Optimization programs will be provided, in which hit-structures are developed by chemical modification. This provides new and enabling research tools for fundamental biological and biomedical studies, as well as for further development into drug candidates.
Currently, molecular genetics has evolved to a point that new bio-molecular targets and pathways are being discovered almost on a daily basis. These targets are often of great interest, both from a fundamental and a commercial point of view, but their study requires small molecules, or chemical probes, to modulate their function and that of the biophysical pathways they are part of. Such small-molecule regulators, however, often do not exist. There is therefore an urgent need for chemical probes that modulate promising targets and pathways that can form the basis of novel targeted therapies.