EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC offers access to technological co-development collaborations with the aim to enable the development, validation and discovery of new applications for new tools, technology or instruments and generation of precompetitive data in collaboration with EU-OPENSCREEN partner sites. For a complete overview of our screening partner sites please visit: EU-OPENSCREEN - Partner Sites. 

EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC offer access to the European Chemical Biology Library (ECBL) and pilot library. The ECBL is a chemically diverse library composed of approx. 100,000 small molecules. The pilot library consists of a representative set of 2,464 diverse compounds and 2,464 known bioactives compounds, which are modulating more than 1,000 known biological targets or pathways at EU-OPENSCREEN Compound Collections. 

For further information and support in the application process please contact us at scientific-projects@eu-openscreen.eu.  

Call Submission Guidelines

Who can apply?  

• Companies that provide technology, tools or instruments
• Large pharmaceutical companies
• Mid-sized pharmaceutical companies
• Highly specialised SMEs
• Startups
• Academics (where applicable: e.g. Researchers that want to start a company. Researchers that want to create a new precompetitive technology)

General criteria for application  

Applicants commit to having obtained legal and ethical consent regarding their research, their samples and/ or their data prior to submitting their application.  
Applicants must agree to comply with the access, IP and dissemination policies described in the statutes of EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC (available at EU-OPENSCREEN Statutes).   
Applicants must agree to comply with the EU-OPENSCREEN privacy policy and terms of submission.

How to submit a proposal? 

• Applicants submit their project idea to the EU-OPENSCREEN project management team via a dedicated contact form.
• Applicants will then be contacted to arrange a call to discuss the projects feasibility and to identify potential partner sites.
• 1-on-1 discussion between potential partner sites and the applicants will be the organized to assess the project implementation (costs, timelines etc).
• Suitable applicants will be asked to complete a full application form by connecting to the ARIA online submission platform.
• Applications for access can be submitted at any time and will be evaluated on a rolling basis.  

Proposal evaluation  

• The review process consists of an excellence and a technical evaluation. The application will remain strictly confidential throughout the review process. Reviewers are bound by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
• One partner site of EU-OPENSCREEN, not involved in the project, will evaluate the excellence and innovative potential of the proposal. An exception will be made for those proposals that were already subjected to a peer-review evaluation prior to submission (for instance as part of a funding application). In such a case, applicants will be asked to report the available funding and related grant agreement number during the application process.
• Technical feasibility of the submitted project will be assessed by the partner sites involved in the project. Herein, the capacity of a partner sites to perform the experiment as well as the provision of key protocols, technology or provision reagent will be taking into consideration. Moreover, technical reviewers will evaluate the resources needed for the technical implementation of the projects at the chosen screening partner site.
• The complete evaluation is carried out online in ARIA, and evaluation results are visible on the applicant’s dashboard.
• Incomplete proposals and those that did not pass the minimum threshold/ criteria for acceptance, will be returned to applicants for amendments according to the reviewer’s comments. Users will be able to re-submit their revised proposals which will be re-evaluated. 

Costs of EU-OPENSCREEN compound collections and services 

• A compound replenishment fee of 42.000€ will apply for the usage of the ECBL by industry organizations irrespective of the seat of their organization.   

If you apply for an open call funded by an EU grant (e.g. CanServ, AgroServ etc) replenishment fees for successful projects may be funded.  

• The compound replenishment fee applies for the usage of the full set of the ECBL (~100,000 small molecules), while approx. 5,000 small molecules of the pilot library containing 2,464 bioactive compounds and 2,464 HTS representative compounds are provided free-of-charge. The EACL (~7,000 non-commercially available small molecules) is also provided free of charge.
• EU-OPENSCREEN does not provide funding for the services offered by the partner sites. These costs (e.g. personnel, machine time, consumables, labware etc) are discussed with the relevant partner site and depend on the complexity and duration of the project.   

If you apply for an open call funded by an EU grant (e.g. CanServ, AgroServ etc) costs of successful projects for instrumentation time, consumables, regular assay readout reagents, and personnel required at the facilities are funded.  

Current funding available can be found here.   

• Please get in touch with us at scientific-projects@eu-openscreen.eu for grant writing support and/ or help with funding opportunities.

Partner site selection   

• Once the partner site is selected, a written project agreement between the applicant and the site has to be signed. The agreement regulates the usage of the ECBL and/or EACL, IP rights, acknowledgments etc.
• Before the start of the project, you will be also asked to prepare together with the partner site a project workplan indicating main project milestones and timelines.

Publication  

Users have to acknowledge EU-OPENSCREEN for using the EU-OPENSCREEN Compound Collection in publications and/ or communication activities that contain data which are based on testing the ECBL by using the following sentence: “EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC is acknowledged for providing its Compound Collection for the presented scientific work.”   

European Chemical Biology Database (ECBD)  

Data will be made publicly available through the ECBD for its rapid and safe dissemination and exploitation. Data ownership stays with the user. An embargo period of up to three years with and option of extension on primary screening results can be requested by the applicant within a time frame of six months from the identification of a validated hit. The time should allow publication and/ or patent filing to secure intellectual property. Data are disseminated according to the FAIR data principles (i.e., Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable), allowing scientific communities to fully benefit from these research activities. Please read more about our EU-OPENSCREEN database here. Visit the ECBD here.