| On March 21, 2018 the European Commission has granted the status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) to EU-OPENSCREEN setting up a Pan European RI for Chemical Biology. The award of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) status by the European Commission was preceded by an extensive and excellence-based selection process in many member countries and the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) forum, a committee of representatives of the country ministries. |  |
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EU-OPENSCREEN-ERIC with its headquarters based in Berlin on the Science Campus Buch was founded by 7 European Member States: the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Poland and Spain. Denmark will participate as an observer and as a full member from 2019. Seven more countries are preparing their participation. 24 institutes (screening centres and chemistry centres) and a data centre were selected as partner institutes of EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC in the member countries in an independent evaluation process. The national node of EU-OPENSCREEN in Latvia is Institute of Organic Synthesis. |
| The primary objective of EU-OPENSCREEN is to create a distributed research infrastructure which meets the needs of its user groups – scientists seeking a better understanding on how fundamental molecular processes act to govern biological function at the organismal, tissue, cellular and pathway levels. The majority of these scientists in Europe, however at present, do not have access to such technology platforms and compound collections, which are generally very costly to purchase, operate and maintain. EU-OPENSCREEN will cost-effectively overcome these limitations by involving and providing access to Europe’s leading screening platforms and chemistry groups, constructing a jointly used compound collection and operating an open-access bioactivity database which will be accessible on a global basis. |
| EU-OPENSCREEN is already cooperating with thirteen of the new Biomedical Sciences (BMS) research infrastructures in the European cluster project CORBEL to jointly create harmonised access for users to their complementary biological and medical technologies, biological samples and data services required for state-of-the-art biomedical research and development. To promote new applications derived from marine organisms in areas such as drug discovery, novel foods and food ingredients, selective breeding in aquaculture, biosanitation, cosmetics and bioenergy, EU-OPENSCREEN is also part of the European cluster project EMBRIC. Beyond Europe, EU-OPENSCREEN cooperates with similar consortia in the USA and Australia. |
Learn more about EU-OPENSCREEN!