EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC

Machine learning (ML) has enabled and accelerated frontier research in the life sciences, but democratised access to such methods is, unfortunately, not a given. Access to necessary hardware and software, knowledge and training, is limited, while methods are typically insufficiently documented and hard to find. Furthermore, even though modern AI-based methods typically generalize well to unseen data, no standard exists to enable sharing and fine-tuning of pretrained models between different analysis tools. Existing user-facing platforms operate entirely independently from each other, often failing to comply with FAIR data and Open Science standards. The field of AI and ML is developing at a staggering pace, making it impossible for the non-specialist to stay up to date. To enable the life science communities to benefit from AI/ML-powered image analysis methods, AI4LIFE will build bridges, providing urgently needed services on the common European research infrastructures. We will build an open, accessible, community-driven repository of FAIR pre-trained AI models and develop services to deliver these models to life scientists, including those without substantial computational expertise. Our direct support and ample training activities will prepare life scientists for responsible use of AI methods, while contributor services and open standards will drive community contributions of new models and interoperability between analysis tools. Open calls and public challenges will provide state-of-the-art solutions to yet unsolved image analysis problems in the life sciences. Our consortium brings together AI/ML researchers, developers of popular open source image analysis tools, providers of European-scale storage and compute services and European life sciences Research Infrastructures -- all united behind the common goal to enable life scientists to fully benefit from the untapped but potentially tremendous power of AI-based analysis methods.

European and global research infrastructures (RIs) provide facilities and resources to support excellence and innovation, delivering socio-economic value by raising skills, advancing knowledge and technology and its exploitation, and driving new development and construction. RIs closely engage with their specialist communities but RI sustainability in the long term requires engagement with civil communities and stakeholders where an understanding of the significance and the socio-economic benefits of the services delivered underpins financial and strategic support. RI-VIS will increase the visibility of European RIs to broader scientific communities, industry and strategic partners in third countries. The RI-VIS consortium has main membership from the life sciences RIs where there is urgent need to improve outreach and strategic partnerships. Partner RIs in other thematic groups ensure that outcomes are relevant to all. A major advantage of this consortium is first hand knowledge of RI services and operating processes and their user communities. RI-VIS will target communities and stakeholders with current and precise information and match them with RIs to facilitate i) the development of new collaborations, ii) user accessibility, iii) collaborative and innovative actions, iv) funding opportunities, v) knowledge transfer and vi) training opportunities. RI-VIS will make it easier for new entrants to find out how RIs are organized and funded, where and how to access RI services and where data is available. The communication framework will include several digital platforms to achieve broad reach and generate a communication toolkit to help others benefit from the experiences gained. RI-VIS will broker engagement of RIs with various stakeholder groups using events and thematic workshops. A collaboration toolkit will identify best engagement strategies to bring new agreements to fruition. RI-VIS will mentor a selection of partnerships to broker cooperation agreements.

MARBLES will use a novel and systematic approach to access and exploit marine microbial biodiversity for sustainable bioprospecting to discover microbial consortia and bioactive molecules for application in aqua- and agriculture and in the clinic. MARBLES' ecology-based bioprospecting strategy will focuses on unique host-microbe interactions in marine environments, including marine sponges, microalgae and fish, which rely on their microbiomes and microbial natural products for disease resistance. Partners’ existing microbial collections and new ones generated during MARBLES will be harnessed for the discovery of novel natural products and synthetic microbial communities. For this, MARBLES will use a systems-wide genomics approach to uncover the bioactive agents in disease-suppressive microbiomes. Also, MARBLES will explore host- and microbe-derived chemicals that elicit production of bioactive compounds, as elicitors to revitalise drug screening. The deliverables will be microbes and consortia and bioactive natural products, their derivatives and elicitors, which can be harnessed to fight infectious diseases in the agrochemical and aquaculture industries and in healthcare. Besides highly innovative, the approaches will be cost-effective and will offer advantages from both environmental and health perspectives in comparison to existing alternatives. The sustainable production of bioprotectants will increase the effectiveness of fish production - reducing the pressure on harvesting wild fish - and aid the transition of the crop agriculture sector towards bio-based and circular solutions. MARBLES will work closely together with a panel of SMEs and large companies from the EU aquaculture, crop protection biotechnology and health sectors. MARBLES fully complies with the Nagoya and Cartagena Protocols, and aims to make major contributions to the UN sustainable development goals, SDG 2, 3, 12, 13 and 14, as well as to current UN processes (BBNJ, DSI, SynBio)

canSERVs mission is to make cutting-edge and customised research services available to the cancer research community EU wide, enable innovative R&D projects and foster precision medicine for patients benefit across Europe. By connecting, coordinating, and aligning existing oncology and complimentary research infrastructures (RIs) and providing services in a synergistic way transnationally, canSERV will capitalise on the critical mass of experts and cutting-edge services offered by canSERVs RIs and their extended network. canSERV brings together world-class European life science RIs (BBMRI, EURO-BIOIMAGING, ELIXIR, EU-IBISBA, EuroPDX, EU-OPENSCREEN, INSTRUCT, EATRIS, INFRAFRONTIER, EMBRC, ECRIN, EATRIS, MIRRI, ARIE, CCE, EORTC and IARC) that collectively not only covers all aspects along the development pipeline for oncology, but is also capable of interconnecting these technologies providing users a guidance for navigating them through the entire translational value chain. The patient organisation ECPC will bring the patient?s perspective, while the two SMEs, ARTTIC and ttopstart, will provide valuable input regarding stakeholder engagement, and project management activities. A common access management system (CAMS) will be developed based on mature solutions from INSTRUCT and BBMRI. The CAMS will provide a method for selection of services, construction and submission of research proposals, multi-step review of research proposals, and tracking of the access process from approval through delivery to conclusion. Through a united user-intuitive transnational access where a united catalogue of oncology services will be offered, our users will have access to a comprehensive service portfolio. As our ambition is to scale up canSERV to a pan-European collaboration of RIs for accelerating the development and implementation of solutions for the cancer patient community, the sustainability of this network beyond the end of the project will also be addressed.

Fragment-Screen will develop innovative instrumentation, workflows and experimental and computational methodologies for fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) enabling access to early phase structure-based drug discovery for all biological targets and for scientists both in industry and academia. The established workflows will use structural biology insights and associated data to feed artificial intelligence (AI) methodology to guide medicinal chemistry in drug development. Fragment-Screen brings together scientists from four ESFRI Landmark research infrastructures (RIs): ESRF (the European synchrotron) and the distributed RIs EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC (medicinal chemistry), ELIXIR (data resources for life science) under the coordination of Instruct-ERIC (integrated structural biology) and seven industry partners in scientific instrumentation and computational and AI sectors including SMEs to remove crucial bottlenecks in early phase drug discovery. The new instrumentation and workflows will be available at European RIs, while the new instruments will be commercialised to increase the technological competitiveness of European industry in drug design and the attractiveness of structural biology RIs for the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. Fragment-Screen will implement open science approaches in early drug discovery to maximise the impact of screening campaigns. Generated data will be made accessible so that iterative cycles applying AI will improve response times for drug discovery. We will create a framework for the objective and independent evaluation of AI in drug design to identify critical developments in this thriving research field. Methodologies for rigorous cross-validation will be established through demonstrator and pilot studies and results will be disseminated to the large scientific communities affiliated to the European RIs and beyond.