New Danish biotechnology platform will make research more efficient
The platform consists of two elements: 1) a compound library hosting facility that prepares and distributes assay-ready plates to be directly used in biological screening; 2) a number of screening nodes, which currently includes sites specialised in pathogenic bacteria, phenotypic screening and bacterial communities.
The compound collection provides unique possibilities for start-up and SME biotech companies in Denmark. The new infrastructure give companies the possibility to screen a huge amount of compounds, which would normally not be available for smaller companies. Furthermore, discovering and developing better drugs often required an interdisciplinary perspective, which is something the researchers are being trained in, at the academic institutions in Denmark. It is therefore easy to take advantage of the new infrastructur for the institutions in Denmark.
Time- and cost-efficient opportunity
The new platform will save both time and capital on research and development activities for life sciences companies. That is why the new platform is a unique opportunity for ambitious companies, explains Claus Stig Kallesøe, CEO of Grit42. Grit42 specialises in pre-clinical data management and is a supplier to the DK-Openscreen platform.“First and foremost, daily work procedures and all data will be streamlined, which have enormous potential for future advanced analysis. Everyone in the industry knows how expensive it is to develop new pharmaceuticals, which is why the possibility of saving time in the screening phase will be visible on the bottom line,” says Claus Stig Kallesøe to the Danish news site, MedWatch.
DK-Openscreen is a 4.8 million EUR investment divided between the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University and Aalborg University.
The platform’s library will contain 50.000 compounds to begin with but the expectation is to increase this number. The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where the compound library is located, has room for up to 200.000 drugs.
Through DK-Openscreen, life sciences and biotech companies will be able to access compounds, which potentially could form the basis of the development of new pharmaceuticals. The easy access will strengthen researchers’ international competitiveness.
The hope is that DK-Openscreen will open up new areas of business, which life sciences companies will be able to work with.
About DK-Openscreen
DK-Openscreen is Denmark’s national infrastructure for chemical biology, constructed as an open access platform for interdisciplinary research centres spanning institutions, universities, and industrial organisations.
The core elements of the infrastructure will guarantee that researchers have access to compounds with the potential to modulate biological systems, as well as having a platform for testing the biological activity of their molecules.
DK-Openscreen is part of the EU-Openscreen project, a European network for open screening processes, which aims to support chemical biological research across the EU.