ELF promotes new discoveries

through open innovation and crowdsourcing

ELF: The European Lead factory

The European Lead Factory is a unique public-private partnership that promotes new discoveries via open innovation and crowdsourcing. It was established to promote the discovery of novel small molecule candidates, suitable for subsequent optimisation, either to drug candidates or to high-quality pharmacological tools for the experimental validation of targets.

The ELF concept

Take a look at this award-winning animation explaining the ELF concept and how it helps to boost drug discovery.

Your target, your results

The European Lead Factory welcomes drug targets in all disease areas. Learn how you can benefit and give your drug discovery research a flying start!

Ultra-High-Throughput Screening

Screening of compounds to assess their activity is funded by the European Lead Factory and carried out at the Pivot Park Screening Centre’s facilities in Oss, placing our facilities at the heart of the European Lead Factory.

More small molecules

Access to an exceptional collection of small molecules is the starting point for drug target researchers in academia and SMEs. Over 300,000 optimised industrial research compounds have been contributed by seven pharmaceutical companies. An all-new compound collection has also been built over time, based on syntheses by SMEs and academic institutions and exploiting the expertise available across all consortium partners. The goal is a further 200,000 compounds, creating a Joint European Compound Library (JECL) of up to 500,000 compounds.

Visit the European Lead Factory website for more information and results. The European Lead Factory has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative.

Partners

The European Lead Factory builds on an established partnership between public and private organisations. It is designed to promote innovation by ensuring in-depth collaboration, honest brokerage and enhanced communication.

The EU Lead Factory has 20 current international partners and 14 former partners. It capitalises on the innovation of academia, the agility of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the experience and resources of large pharmaceutical partners that are members of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).