The main objectives of DRIVE are: i) to implement the EU-OPENSCREEN (EU-OS) scientific program and the delivery of its main mission, to establish and operate a sustainable European RI for chemical biology, supporting life-science research with innovative chemical tools and bioactivity data and their translation into medicines and products for the benefit of the society, and ii) to consolidate EU-OS ERIC membership, supporting the national efforts in EU-OS member and candidate countries.
In the framework of the DRIVE project, workflows and access policies for users were improved, and outreach materials were produced to describe the EU-OS working procedures. KPIs were developed to monitor the progress of the RI’s implementation and operation. A network of national ‘ambassadors’ was established to liaise with external chemistry users interested in making their compounds available as part of the EU-OS European Academic Chemical Library (EACL). Over 5,000 compounds have been collected during the lifetime of the DRIVE project. Ten screening projects in oncology, diabetes, neurodegenerative disease, inflammatory disease, and infection disease were completed with external users to demonstrate the functionality of the services offered by EU-OS. Three more successful EU-OS DRIVE small molecule screening projects were selected for funding in RP3, and 5 projects in total were executed and completed by the end of the project. The primary screening data were deposited in EU-OS’s open-access European Chemical Biology Database (ECBD). Scientific publications are in preparation, and projects results have been included in postgraduate theses. The number of fragment library users increased and strengthened the cooperation between EU-OS and Instruct-ERIC/iNEXT-Discovery. Fragment-based lead discovery was incorporated into the service catalogue of EU-OS ERIC. The first five chemoproteomics projects and one MSI project have been implemented at EU-OS-DRIVE partner facilities. The projects addressed a range of biological questions and fields, such as mood disorders, inflammation, cancer, and prion diseases. Data management procedures to data FAIRification were refined. The Industry Liaison Office (ILO) continued to facilitate the engagement with companies, and annual ILO workshops were organised. Four co-development projects with industry partners and two co-development projects with SMEs were successfully executed. Training programmes focussing on the training needs of platform staff at partner sites and of the wider scientific community were implemented. The first training school was organised virtually in 2021, attracting over 300 participants. In 2022, the second training school was organised, attracting over 400 participants and offering approximately 35 hours of lectures. EU-OS organised 15 webinars with over 50 attendees on average. Staff exchanges were organised to train researchers in new technologies that are part of the novel services in DRIVE. Outreach campaigns to existing and new user communities were reinforced. Future strategic opportunities to promote long-term sustainability of the RI were explored. The coordination team established transparent workflows and procedures to support progress in and communication between all WPs and to ensure that each WP met its deliverables and milestones as planned. Continuous reporting, risk assessment, and communication with the EU COM were carried out regularly.
