The ELF Honest Data Broker: informatics enabling public–private collaboration in a precompetitive arena

• Published in: Drug discovery today Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 97 - 102
• Main Authors: Paillard, Guillaume, Cochrane, Philip, Jones, Philip S., van Hoorn, Willem P., Caracoti, Andrei, van Vlijmen, Herman, Pannifer, Andrew D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-01-2016
• Subjects: Cooperative Behavior; Drug Discovery - methods; Drug Industry; Informatics; Intellectual Property; Research Personnel; Small Molecule Libraries
• ISSN: 1359-6446; 1878-5832
• DOI: 10.1016/j.drudis.2015.11.005

•A novel HTS triage and management application to enable a large precompetitive hit discovery consortium.•Scientific functionality and IP safeguards for academic and pharma partners–key considerations.•Cloud implementation simplifies implementation.•Potential model for sustainable precompetitive initiatives.
New precompetitive ways of working in the pharmaceutical industry are driving the development of new informatics systems to enable their execution and management. The European Lead Factory (ELF) is a precompetitive, 30-partner collaboration between academic groups, small–medium enterprises and pharmaceutical companies created to discover small molecule hits against novel biological targets. A unique HTS screening and triage workflow has been developed to balance the intellectual property and scientific requirements of all the partners. Here, we describe the ELF Honest Data Broker, a cloud-based informatics system providing the scientific triage tools, fine-grained permissions and management tools required to implement the workflow.