The European Lead Factory is a public-private partnership that aims to accelerate early drug discovery in Europe.
[1] The European Lead Factory is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative and consists of a pan-European consortium that includes 7 pharmaceutical companies as well as partners from academia and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
[6][7] The result is defined in a ‘hit list’: a number of compounds that show affinity for the target.
The compounds on those lists can either be used as probes to better understand biological pathways or as starting points for lead discovery efforts for novel drugs.
These hits can be further optimised outside of the European Lead Factory, for affinity but also for drug-like properties as selectivity, solubility and metabolism in the human body.