COVID-19 Activities

COVID-19 Activities at EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC

EU-OPENSCREEN is a not-for-profit European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) for Chemical Biology and early Drug Discovery with more than 20 affiliated high-throughput screening and chemistry facilities. It operates an open-access database and a central compound management facility which stores, quality-controls and manages the jointly-used EU-OPENSCREEN compound collection.

In response to the current pandemic, we are actively involved in a range of activities to study the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and identify candidate molecules for therapeutics. We are exploiting our competences in drug discovery with a focus on drug repurposing activities and the development of high throughput screening assays for the rapid identification of small molecule modulators of viral proteins or host pathways essential for viral replication.

Scientific resources

To support Sars-CoV-2 research, EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC prioritises user access to its core services and technologies. Users from academia and industry with COVID-19 related research projects can submit their project idea and collaborate with us. EU-OPENSCREEN offers:

  • High-throughput screening-amenable assay optimisation, miniaturisation and transfer onto one of our HTS platforms
  • High-content screening (HCS) and High-throughput screening (HTS) of our small molecule libraries, using a variety of read-out technologies that are commonly applicable to the majority of assays: e.g. absorbance, luminescence, fluorescence intensity or polarization, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), AlphaScreen technology, FLIPR for calcium readout
  • Specialised detection methods for screening or validation of active compounds, e.g. surface plasmon resonance (SPR), bio-layer interferometry (BLI), resonance wave gating (Corning’s Epic technology), flow cytometry, cell impedance, Lab-on-a-chip microfluidic systems
  • Available compound libraries at our partner sites: known bioactives/ drug repurposing collections (e.g LOPAC, Drug Repurposing Hub, Prestwick, Microsource etc), natural products collections, fragment library and small-molecule diversity libraries
  • Access to automated liquid handling instruments with flexibility to accommodate nanolitre and microlitre volumes of samples and reagents in multiple assay formats (96-, 384-, and 1536-well formats)
  • Biological safety level (BSL) 1-3 laboratories
  • Chemical hit-to-lead optimisation

We are part of the German network“Zukunftsorte” Berlin , an association of leading science locations in Berlin, which has just published a new brochure featuring the activities of the network to fight the Corona pandemic. Do not miss to read it and learn what EU-OPENSCREEN and the other innovation hubs in Berlin are offering in the field of corona research. You can download the brochure (in German only) here .

Please contact us here to get in touch and discuss your COVID-19 related project.

For COVID-19 and coronavirus-related funding opportunities, visit the European Research Area corona platform or the Coronavirus Funding Monitor with a curated list of open funding calls.