The Joint European Compound Library: boosting precompetitive research

Area of Science:

• Medicinal Chemistry
• Drug Discovery
• Chemical Biology

Background:

• High-throughput screening (HTS) is crucial for identifying novel drug candidates.
• Access to diverse compound libraries is essential for effective drug discovery and target validation.
• Proprietary compound collections from multiple organizations often remain siloed, limiting their collective utility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and characterize the Joint European Compound Library (JECL), a new HTS collection.
• To analyze the physicochemical properties and chemical diversity of the JECL core collection.
• To present a novel model for sharing compound information across proprietary collections while maintaining structural confidentiality.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of physicochemical properties (e.g., molecular weight, logP, topological surface area) of the JECL core compounds.
• Assessment of chemical diversity using established metrics.
• Development and application of a computational model for analyzing compound data without structural disclosure.

Main Results:

• The JECL core collection comprises over 321,000 compounds with significant physicochemical diversity.
• The library exhibits a broad spectrum of predicted biological activities, indicating its potential for various therapeutic areas.
• The developed model successfully enabled diversity and quality analysis of pooled proprietary compound data.

Conclusions:

• The JECL represents a valuable, diverse, and high-quality resource for precompetitive drug discovery and target validation.
• The compound sharing model facilitates collaborative analysis of large compound sets without compromising intellectual property.
• The JECL is accessible to European academic laboratories and SMEs via the IMI European Lead Factory, fostering innovation in drug discovery.