Arrow Left Information for programme owners

Application and review process

In the past years, the European Lead Factory has welcomed screening proposals from European researchers in open calls

Please note that as of February 2022, the ELF has closed its regular calls for screening proposals. The partnership aims to continue its efforts and is actively working to achieve sustained funding to reopen regular calls for proposals in the future. If this occurs, we will announce it in our newsletter and on our website.

In the meantime, the ELF is now for the first time offering its services and assets to charities and foundations around the world. Read more about this exciting development here.  

More information about the opportunities and benefits of collaborating with the European Lead Factory on your drug discovery programmes can be found here.

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    Preparation and submission

    On this page, the legal documents and other information relevant for academic researchers and SMEs with an ELF screening programme is still available. The selection criteria and requirements for the previous calls can be found here.

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    Scientific review and proposal selection

    After receiving a screening proposal, the ELF Programme Office performed an eligibility check to assess the availability of the target or phenotypic screening approach against previous selected programmes, and the technical feasibility of the screening assay. There is a 12-month target exclusivity period to prevent conflicting down-stream activities with similar hits from the current compound library (patent applications etc).

    Proposals that pass the eligibility check were reviewed by our scientific Review Committee. Their evaluation was used by the Selection Committee, together with elements like patient benefit and risk diversity of the portfolio, to select those proposals that contribute to a scientifically sound, diverse, risk-balanced, and economically justifiable portfolio of screening programmes.

    The committees met regularly to consider programmes. The result of the review and selection process was one of the following:

    • Programme selection, leading to optimisation of the assay for our in-house screening technologies;
    • Conditional approval, for example giving the programme owner 6 months to submit an improved assay;
    • Rejection.

    All proposals are kept confidential. There is an undertaking from all members of all offices, boards and committees (including the industry participants) to not disclose any details to their organizations or to third parties.

    After your programme has been selected and your organization has signed the Contributing Third Party Agreement, there are certain rights and obligations that apply. Furthermore, a special IT-system (the ELF’s Honest Data Broker) has been designed to guarantee efficient access to the experimental data while ensuring limited permissions to safeguard the intellectual property (IP).

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    Accession and execution

    After proposal selection, the applicant is contacted by the ELF Programme Office to discuss the full process. The organization of the applicant becomes the Programme Owner and is asked to complete and sign the Contributing Third Party Agreement, which deals with the rights and obligations and other elements of the collaboration. Next, the Programme Owner meets (virtually) with the Programme Team, a selected group of experts from the European Screening Centre (ESC), to design a specific programme plan together. This plan aims to maximize the number of meaningful hits, and defines strategies for:

    After the programme plan is finalized and approved, the screen and hit characterisation are run within the ESC in close collaboration with the Programme Owner. The data is  used to generate a Qualified Hit List (QHL) with up to 50 promising compounds and an explanatory report with all associated biological data. In addition, resynthesis of a selected number of QHL compounds will be provided.

    Successful applicants gain access to an industry standard drug discovery platform. Programme plans are designed to maximise the potential for achieving the Programme Owners’ goals (e.g., funding, partnership deals, etc.). In addition, depending on each party’s interests, Programme Owners have the opportunity to partner with one of the established pharmaceutical companies within the consortium.

    If you have any questions about this process, please contact the ELF Programme Office at programme@europeanleadfactory.eu.

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