NOR-OPENSCREEN - the Norwegian EU-OPENSCREEN node

NOR-Openscreen (www.openscreen.no) has established a distributed national research infrastructure with nodes at Universities of Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, and SINTEF in Trondheim. It is providing competence and services in the field of chemical biology through high-throughput screening facilities, local state-of-the-art compound libraries, and expertise within bioprospecting, natural products, and drug discovery. Chemical biology technology is an emerging field in Norway with a strong need to build up a national research infrastructure with open access for researchers from both the academia and the industry. This creates new opportunities both for basic science as well as for innovation and commercialization. Chemical biology is a rapidly growing field encompassing chemistry, pharmacy, nanotechnology, biology and molecular medicine, and involves identification and use of small molecular compounds to specifically perturb or activate biological functions. Chemical biology and high throughput screening are used to develop new tool compounds for research, and compounds with application in medicine, veterinary medicine, food industry, plant, and agricultural science as well as other areas of biology and biotechnology. NOR-Openscreen is one of the founder nodes of the ESFRI project EU-OPENSCREEN (www.eu-openscreen.eu) which was awarded ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) status in 2018 and has established a distributed pan-European infrastructure of screening platforms (31 nodes in 9 countries) open to researchers from both academia and the industry. In addition, the EU-OPESCREEN infrastructure is providing the European Compound Library (ECL) of 100 000 bioprofiled small molecules and a central database (www.ecbd.eu) following the guidelines of FAIR data management, which makes all results derived from the ECL publicly accessible. Furthermore, EU-OPENSCREEN is organizing joint training and education programs both for staff of ERIC partners sites and the chemical biology community. NOR-Openscreen as EU-OPENSCREEN partner gives Norwegian researchers the opportunity to access a much wider range of cutting-edge technologies. A detailed list of publications utilizing the research infrastructure can be found under: https://www.openscreen.uio.no/english/publications/

Chemical Biology is the systematic application of chemicals as probes for the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of biological processes, and chemical tools have unique properties that make them especially suitable for complementing the methods of molecular biology (e.g. mutagenesis, RNA interference and transgenic models). NOR-OPENSCREEN represents the CB and marine bioprospecting expertise in Norway and is aiming to establish a distributed national network, providing local access to state-of-the-art compound libraries, high-throughput screening facilities and expertise within natural products drug discovery. The CB technology is under establishment in Norway and there is a strong need to build a national research infrastructure. This will create new opportunities both for basic science as well as for innovation and commercialization. Furthermore, NOR-OPENSCREEN constitutes the Norwegian partner in the ESFRI project EU-OPENSCREEN (European Infrastructure of Open Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology) (prep. phase 2010-13, transition 2014-15) and will become the Norwegian node of the EU-OPENSCREEN infrastructure. EU-OPENSCREEN is building a distributed pan-European infrastructure of screening platforms open to researchers from both academia and industry. In addition to the distributed network of technologically advanced screening centers, the EU-OPENSCREEN infrastructure will provide a central compound collection and a publicly accessible central database. Furthermore, EU-OPENSCREEN will organize joint training and education programs and operate with common standards and a harmonized legal framework. NOR-OPENSCREEN as EU-OPENSCREEN partner will give Norwegian researchers the opportunity to access a much wider range of cutting-edge technologies. NOR-OPENSCREEN will, however, also contribute as a specialized screening node offering a.o. unique expertise within defined areas.