Chemical biology is an interdisciplinary research field that has emerged in the last decade from classical pharmacology and cell biology, to study the effects of chemical compounds on biological systems. EU-OPENSCREEN is a research infrastructure of screening and medicinal chemistry platforms that was established by the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), in order to promote new drug design. Hence, the publication “EU-OPENSCREEN: A Novel Collaborative Approach to Facilitate Chemical Biology” presents recent successful chemical biology projects at selected partner institutes to provide an overview of the EU-OPENSCREEN network expertise and capacities.
As part of the Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) project developed at Fundación MEDINA, we describe the identification of a previously unreported natural compound active in the cell cycle regulation of many sporadic tumor types sharing a specific mutation. That mutation, called VHL, is responsible for RCC or end-stage renal disease. This project demonstrates the feasibility of selectively targeting a specific gene to achieve a potential clinical benefit. It can have a great impact on the development of new targeted therapies for the treatment of cancer and other genetic diseases.
Altogether, the results of the work of the EU-OPENSCREEN infrastructure and its associated community of expert teams in screening, medicinal chemistry, and disease biology will generate high-quality chemical probes and bioactivity data sets for use by the wider life science and drug discovery communities.
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Brennecke P, Rasina D, Aubi O, Herzog K, Landskron J, Cautain B, Vicente F, Quintana J, Mestres J, Stechmann B, Ellinger B, Brea J, Kolanowski JL, Pilarski R, Orzaez M, Pineda-Lucena A, Laraia L, Nami F, Zielenkiewicz P, Paruch K, Hansen E, von Kries JP, Neuenschwander M, Specker E, Bartunek P, Simova S, Les´nikowski Z, Krauss S, Lehtiö L, Bilitewski U, Brönstrup M, Taskén K, Jirgensons A, Lickert H, Clausen MH, Andersen JH, Vicent MJ, Genilloud O, Martinez A, Nazaré M, Fecke W, and Gribbon P. EU-OPENSCREEN: A Novel Collaborative Approach to Facilitate Chemical Biology. SLAS DISCOVERY: Advancing Life Sciences R&D, 2019,1:16 Abstract
