11 December 2024
We are glad to announce that the entire collection of high-quality molecules offered for free on opnMe.com is also now part of the open access collection of Compounds Australia. Through Compounds Australia, all opnMe molecules can now be accessed in flexible assay-ready formats by drug discovery researchers across Australia and around the world.
We spoke with Dr. Nyssa Drinkwater, Manager of Compounds Australia, and Prof. Sally-Ann Poulsen, Academic Director of Compounds Australia, to hear their thoughts on this partnership.
opnMe: Can you tell us a bit more about Compounds Australia?
Nyssa Drinkwater: Compounds Australia is Australia’s national compound management facility housed within the Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics at Griffith University. The open access facility plays a critical role in advancing drug discovery, providing researchers access to high-value compound libraries as well as the specialist expertise and infrastructure required to screen those libraries in high throughput. For example, our open access collection contains over 55,000 compounds available to national and international researchers to fuel their scientific research programs.
opnMe: Can you elaborate on your vision and on how this partnership would help further it?
Sally-Ann Poulsen: Compounds Australia and opnMe share a vision to facilitate independent preclinical and translational research by sharing well-characterized tool molecules and resources. With this initiative, our goal is to further accelerate scientific discoveries and promote information and resource-sharing as well as collaborations to meet global health needs.
opnMe: How can opnMe facilitate research in Australia?
Nyssa Drinkwater: At Compounds Australia, we are continuously working to improve and add value to our open access compound collections. We provide those collections to researchers in a range of flexible, assay-ready formats designed to suit their needs. The opnMe collection of tool compounds are an invaluable addition to our open access libraries, which are specifically designed to support target identification and validation and enable lead discovery. We are grateful to opnMe for gifting their collection to us free-of-charge and are excited to be able to provide that collection to Compounds Australia’s users.
opnMe: What do you like about the molecule collection available on opnMe?
Nyssa Drinkwater: With the opnMe collection containing over 90 highly characterized molecules that are rigorously quality-controlled and carefully selected for relevance to key disease research topics, the collection is an incredibly valuable resource for drug discovery researchers. Because it covers a wide range of mechanisms of action against contemporary targets, including GPCRs, nuclear receptors, epigenetic targets, membrane transporters, ion channels, kinases, RNA targets, PROTACs, and enzymes, it is incredibly flexible, benefiting drug discovery research programs across many therapeutic areas. Finally, with each molecule in the opnMe collection coming with a comprehensive profile that includes structural data, a rich pharmacology package, and selectivity data set, research programs are accelerated and enabled by the expertise and resources already invested by Boehringer Ingelheim.
opnMe: Any final thoughts you would like to share with us?
Sally-Ann Poulsen and Nyssa Drinkwater: We are very proud to be working with opnMe and to add the rich selection of tool compounds to our open access collection.
opnMe: Thank you for sharing these valuable insights. We are delighted to be a part of this collaborative effort too, and to enable more scientists in Australia to access our molecules and enhance their research.
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About Compounds Australia:
Compounds Australia provides services critical to the drug discovery research sector. Based around a custom-designed suite of advanced robotics, Compounds Australia facilitates collaborative drug discovery across Australia by enabling access to compound libraries and providing industry-standard compound storage, processing, and management.
About opnMe:
opnMe.com, the open innovation portal of Boehringer Ingelheim, fosters science and collaboration initiatives in areas of high unmet medical need. With “Molecules to Order”, we share well-characterized tool compounds free of charge with no IP strings attached. These are complemented by “Molecules for Collaboration” where we offer access to unprecedented molecules, with the chance to get your research proposal funded. With our “opn2EXPERTS” and “techMATCH” programs, we enlist scientific advice on key scientific issues to fuel further drug discovery and deliver novel solutions that benefit unmet patient needs. Our newly launched “opn2TALENTS” postdoc grants awards opportunities for high-level talents to pitch their scientific ideas and approaches for a well-defined research question, to conduct their research at one of our discovery research sites in Germany, Austria, or the US.