ChemAxon Provides Chemistry Informatics Platform for the European Lead Factory

BUDAPEST, Hungary, BRUSSELS & LEIDEN, The Netherlands, February 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

ChemAxon, a leader in providing chemistry software solutions and consulting services for life science research, and the European Lead Factory, a novel platform for innovative drug discovery, announces that ChemAxon will provide the core tools and leads the development of the informatics platform to support the panEuropean initiative.

ChemAxon will be building a portal to support the crowd-sourcing initiative using its core JChem Base and Marvin components. The scientific decision process involved in selecting the right proposals from those submitted will be supported by ChemAxon's Discovery Toolkit, including various fingerprints and physico-chemical property predictors. The portal will also offer a way for submitters to keep track of their submission's status and for the consortium's selection committee to score and analyze submitted proposals.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the world's largest public-private initiative in the field of pharmaceutical research aims to create a new and unique collaboration of public and private sector. The research program of up to € 196 million and named the European Lead Factory, involving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), academic institutions and large pharmaceutical companies, aims to improve the competitiveness of the European pharmaceutical industry, accelerate the drug development process, and strives to develop safer, more effective drugs.

The European Lead Factory was launched by an international consortium of 30 partners, with the only Hungarian participant being ChemAxon Ltd. This partnership, the first of its kind, is supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and creates unprecedented opportunities for the discovery of new medicines through access to a collection of small molecules contributed by pharmaceutical companies, and a newly synthesized compound collection built by the SMEs and academic institutions.

As a result of this partnership, the new compound library consisting of up to half a million compounds will be accessible to all project partners and to public organizations. Screening of this compound collection will be performed within the pharmaceutical companies and by a newly established European Screening Centre, which will run state of the art facilities in Scotland and the Netherlands to handle logistics and screening of compound libraries.

If the project proves successful during its initial five year funding period, the partnership aims for a sustainable role in drug discovery in Europe.

Notes to Editors

The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° 115489, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in kind contribution.

IMI's full press release to be found at:

http://www.chemaxon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/PressRelease_EuropeanLeadFactory_Final.pdf

About ChemAxon

ChemAxon is a leader in providing cheminformatics software platforms and desktop applications for the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries.  With core capabilities for structure visualization, search and management, property prediction, virtual synthesis, screening and drug design, ChemAxon focuses upon active interaction with users and software portability to create powerful, cost effective cross platform solutions that power modern cheminformatics and chemical communication.  The company is privately owned with European headquarters in Budapest, US East Coast headquarters in Cambridge, MA, and sales and support offices in Europe, Japan and across North America.

SOURCE ChemAxon