EUbOPEN: Enabling and Unlocking biology in the OPEN

Project Information

EUbOPEN

Grant agreement ID: 875510

DOI

10.3030/875510

Project closed

EC signature date 11 May 2020

Start date 1 May 2020

End date 31 October 2025

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Health, demographic change and well-being

Total cost

€ 63 591 790,25

EU contribution

€ 27 935 000,00

Coordinated by

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITAET FRANKFURT AM MAIN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - EUbOPEN (EUbOPEN: Enabling and Unlocking biology in the OPEN)

Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2024-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Almost twenty years after deciphering the human genome, our understanding of human disease is still far from complete. One of the most powerful and versatile tools to better understand biology and disease-relevant processes are well-characterised small chemical modulators of protein function. The Enabling and Unlocking Biology in the OPEN (EUbOPEN) project aims to develop high-quality chemical tool compounds, such as inhibitors or activators for 1,000 proteins (one third of the druggable proteins in the human body) and develop disease-relevant assays to test these tools. The project enables unencumbered access to these research tools, thereby empowering academia and industry alike to explore disease biology and unlock the discovery of new drug targets and treatments.

To study the function of a protein in any given cell type, scientists need small chemical tools that affect the target as specifically as possible, thereby avoiding unintended effects on other proteins. Therefore, there is an urgent need for selective and well-characterised chemical modulators for basic and applied research. Ideally, such tools would be available for every human protein. Moreover, these chemical modulators should be available to all researchers without restrictions on use, thus providing scientists with tools to better understand understudied proteins, and discover possible links to disease.

EUbOPEN generates potent, well-characterised, functional small-molecule modulators for novel target families by using new technologies and test them in well-characterised, disease-relevant human tissue assays in the areas of immunology, oncology and neuroscience. All project outputs, which include chemogenomic sets, chemical probes, protocols, assays and research data are being made openly available to the research community without restriction. With this set of chemical tools available, scientists will be poised to interrogate the latest findings emerging from big data approaches and human genetic studies, thus compressing time from gene discovery to target prioritisation, and ultimately reducing the time to bring innovative treatments and drugs to patients.
EUbOPEN has five high level objectives:

1. Assemble an open access chemogenomic library (a library of well-profiled compounds binding only to a small number of proteins) physically available compounds supported by meta-data
2. Develop deeply-characterised chemical probes and ligands to specific protein family members
3. Develop open access cell assay protocols and data from well-characterised human disease tissue to profile the chemical tools
4. Establish infrastructure and resources that will live beyond the lifetime of this project
5. Efficiently communicate and disseminate data and materials

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Open access chemogenomic library (https://www.eubopen.org/chemogenomics/chemogenomic-set)
EUbOPEN acquired 2317 candidate compounds covering 975 targets and assessed their purity, structural integrity and cytotoxicity. Specific profiling assays and protocols have been established and published on the EUbOPEN website. New technologies for compound profiling have been developed to speed up the characterization of these compounds.

Chemical probes and ligands (https://www.eubopen.org/chemical-probes)
In total, 91 chemical tools (chemical probes/handles) from EUbOPEN, EFPIA partners and others partners collaborating with EUbOPEN have been approved by the independent scientific committee and made available to the research community.
The chemical probe effort was supported through recruitment of chemical probes from the research community (academic and private) via the donated chemical probes program. Established partnerships with chemical vendors will maintain the resupply of chemical probes to the research community and ultimately support target identification and development of novel therapeutic strategies.
Chemical probe development was accelerated by parallel protein production, assay development and structural biology efforts as well as by the development of new technologies for hit identification. In four years over 2000 proteins of 628 unique targets have been purified and 25 recombinant antibodies for EUbOPEN target proteins were generated. We established 213 in vitro assays, 139 cellular assays, and 150 CRISPR knockout cell lines to support compound validation. Over 450 protein structures have been deposited in the PDB for public access together with detailed structural descriptions, including material and methods. Further hits have been identified using DNA encoded library screening, fragment screening, Affinity Selection Mass Spectrometry screening, in silico screening, and via contributions from EFPIA partners.

Open access cell assay protocols and data (https://www.eubopen.org/protocols-reagents)
EUbOPEN has focussed on developing open access cell assay protocols and data from well-characterised human disease tissue to profile the chemical tools in four disease areas: inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), colorectal cancer (CRC), liver fibrosis (LF) and multiple sclerosis (MS), in which patient-derived cell assays (PCAs) for compound screening have been developed and validated. Fifteen tissue assay protocols were established in the four disease areas and made available to the research community together with screening data.

Infrastructure and dissamination of data and materials (https://gateway.eubopen.org)
In order to facilitate access to the results and outputs of EUbOPEN, we continued to improve and optimise the public-facing Gateway. The Gateway is an interactive tool, which allows searching of data for different user communities, including chemists, biologists and informaticians in a compound or target centric fashion as well as browsing. EUbOPEN compounds have been distributed to laboratories in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. Overall, more than 8,500 compounds have been distributed. Additionally, more than 40 chemical probes are available from commercial vendors.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The goal of EUbOPEN is to build a sustainable, open science public-private partnership and to provide infrastructure and standardised platforms that will nucleate and support a global effort targeting the entire druggable genome. As a step towards this global initiative, EUbOPEN contributes to the Target 2035 initiative, an international effort of biomedical scientists working in the public and private sector, with the aim of developing and applying new technologies to create chemogenomic libraries, chemical probes and biological probes for the entire human proteome by the year 2035. Like-minded consortia, such as the Illuminating the Druggable Genome initiative, Open Targets and EU-OPENSCREEN participate jointly in this initiative. Moreover, EUbOPEN teamed up with European initiatives such as FAIRplus to ensure our work enables a more open scientific culture, which will help to avoid duplication, and reduce both redundancy and wasting of resources. The unbiased systematic approach of EUbOPEN to enable new targets, will move research emphasis toward less studied proteins, and provide new insights and novel therapeutic opportunities. By sharing our science freely and in the open, and by continuously proving the merits of expanding the use of open science. EUbOPEN aims to become a landmark IMI2 project that exemplifies the remarkable benefits of open science and its long-lasting impact on the European research community and society.

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