Donated chemical probes for open science
Müller S., Ackloo S., Arrowsmith CH., Bauser M., Baryza JL., Blagg J., Böttcher J., Bountra C., Brown PJ., Bunnage ME., Carter AJ., Damerell D., Dötsch V., Drewry DH., Edwards AM., Edwards J., Elkins JM., Fischer C., Frye SV., Gollner A., Grimshaw CE., IJzerman A., Hanke T., Hartung IV., Hitchcock S., Howe T., Hughes TV., Laufer S., Li VMJ., Liras S., Marsden BD., Matsui H., Mathias J., O'Hagan RC., Owen DR., Pande V., Rauh D., Rosenberg SH., Roth BL., Schneider NS., Scholten C., Singh Saikatendu K., Simeonov A., Takizawa M., Tse C., Thompson PR., Treiber DK., Viana AYI., Wells CI., Willson TM., Zuercher WJ., Knapp S., Mueller-Fahrnow A.
Potent, selective and broadly characterized small molecule modulators of protein function (chemical probes) are powerful research reagents. The pharmaceutical industry has generated many high-quality chemical probes and several of these have been made available to academia. However, probe-associated data and control compounds, such as inactive structurally related molecules and their associated data, are generally not accessible. The lack of data and guidance makes it difficult for researchers to decide which chemical tools to choose. Several pharmaceutical companies (AbbVie, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen, MSD, Pfizer, and Takeda) have therefore entered into a pre-competitive collaboration to make available a large number of innovative high-quality probes, including all probe-associated data, control compounds and recommendations on use (https://openscienceprobes.sgc-frankfurt.de/). Here we describe the chemical tools and target-related knowledge that have been made available, and encourage others to join the project.