Strumenti chimici disponibili a tutti possono accelerare lo sviluppo di farmaci necessari | News | CORDIS | European Commission

[From Google translate] Chemical tools available to all can accelerate the development of necessary drugs

What happens when industry and academia join forces for the sake of science? They launch an open access website that helps researchers discover new medical treatments.

Chemical probes are important tools in pharmaceutical research. Chemical biologists frequently use these small molecules to study or manipulate biological systems such as cells and organisms. Although the pharmaceutical industry has generated many high-quality probes, the related data are often missing or misleading. This lack of reliable data is an obstacle for researchers who decide what chemical tools to use in their research for new therapies. 

To address this lack of accessible knowledge, a group of pharmaceutical companies, universities, hospitals and research organisations have joined forces to make a large number of innovative probes and associated data available to the research community. With partial EU funding through the ULTRA-DD project, the partners have launched a website called "Open Science Probes". The site provides information on a unique collection of probes with related data and control compounds, how to use the molecules and how to order them. The chemical tools and specific knowledge made available are described in an article published on the eLife platform.