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“We are delighted that Sweden becomes a member of our research infrastructure. Our new partners at Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have an impressive track record in molecular medicine. We are proud to have them on board to support our growing number of scientific collaborations”, says Wolfgang Fecke, Director of EU-OPENSCREEN.
“We are happy to be a member of the EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC. In formalising the collaboration and becoming a part of the consortium we strengthen both Swedish and European research”, says Dr. Maria Thuveson, Deputy Director General at the Swedish Research Council (VR).
The representing entity is the Swedish Research Council. Sweden will be represented in the Assembly of Members by Helena Berglund (VR) and Professor Fredrik Almqvist (Umeå University).
The Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS)
The Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS) was formally established in 2010 through the joint efforts of academic and industrial researchers within small-molecule discovery, and Swedish public funding agencies. CBCS originated as a VR-funded national infrastructure (2010-2017) and has since 2013 been a SciLifeLab platform. By 2022, CBCS is again a VR-funded national infrastructure and has expanded to include 6 nodes. Today, CBCS is represented at Sweden’s all larger universities, from north to south - Umeå, Uppsala, Stockholm, Linköping, Gothenburg, and Lund - which have different focus areas reflecting the local strong research environments.
CBCS has a long track record in screening projects with all different model systems from enzymatic assays to cell-based phenotypic set up to pathogens at biosafety level 2 (BSL2). Small molecules play a central role in the study of pathogens and we are now proud to present the assay development and screening service in a biosafety level 3 environment. CBCS will offer assay development support, compound screening services, and hit-to-lead guidance in BSL2 and BSL3. Our skilled team members have long experience in compound screening with pathogens. Our affiliated biosafety level 2 and 3 laboratories are equipped with instruments that allow medium- to high-throughput screening campaigns and liquid-handling solutions combined with various assay readouts as well as automated time-lapse microscopy.
EU-OPENSCREEN Swedish partner sites
Two official partner sites in Sweden have successfully passed the partner site selection procedure and will complement the EU-OPENSCREEN consortium: the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Karolinska Institutet (CBCS-KI) in Stockholm and the Chemical Biology Centre at Umeå University (CBCS-UmU).
"Sweden has been a partner in EU-OPENSCREEN since the preparatory phase, and the achievements of the CBCS over the last decade are impressive. We are glad to see that the EU-OPENSCREEN community is growing with two new member countries and new partner sites, which joined this year" says Bahne Stechmann, Head of Operations and Scientific Strategy.
Karolinska Institutet is Sweden’s single largest centre of medical academic research. The chemical biology infrastructure at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics and within SciLifeLab provides access to a range of pioneering technologies in molecular biosciences. As an EU-OPENSCREEN partner site, the Karolinska Institutet will provide assay development, screening and medicinal chemistry support. CBCS is a core part of the Chemical Biology and Genome Engineering (CBGE) platform at SciLifeLab, which also includes the CRISP Functional Genomics and Chemical Proteomics units, thereby complementing the expertise of EU-OPENSCREEN in these important areas. Dr Anna-Lena Gustavsson, Director Chemical Biology,Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS), SciLifeLab, Karolinska Institutet already looks back on a long and successful cooperation with EU-OPENSCREEN and is looking forward to intensifying this cooperation as a future partner site: "The collaboration with EU-OPENSCREEN is a decisive step in the right direction for the Swedish Chemical Biology Consortium and opens up new opportunities for us to contribute our expertise in new projects and to advance research in Europe.”
CBCS Umeå is situated at the Department of Chemistry and has dedicated facilities for assay development, high throughput and high content screening, synthetic chemistry facilities and medicinal chemistry support. CBCS Umeå also has advanced cell biology and infection labs (BSL-2 level) and long experience of screening with infection disease models. It has significant expertise with different infection models, co-culturing, organoid culturting, as well as whole-organism screening (e.g., C. elegans) and microbiology screens (e.g., E. coli, Mycobacteria, Chlamydia etc.). As one of the two founding nodes in CBCS, the CBCS Umeå chemistry team has gained extensive experiences in screening hit evaluations, lead identification and optimization, scaffold hopping, and structure-based design as well as hit evaluation from cell based phenotypic screens. The team also has experience in probe development for mechanism of action (MoA) elucidations. As a new EU-OPENSCREEN partner site, CBCS Umeå will provide screening and medicinal chemistry support.
”CBCS has assisted Swedish researchers in the field for over a decade and the membership in EU-OPENSCREEN will now open new avenues for Swedish researchers and will also be open for European researchers to access the expertise built up within CBCS”, says Erik Chorell Associate Professor, Co-Director, Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden, Umeå University