What does the scientific team at the Finnish Drug Discovery Center do?

30.1.
Press Release

The Finnish Drug Discovery Center (FDDC) office is located in the heart of the local scientific community in Kupittaa, Turku. We collaborate with Finnish academic research groups and university innovation offices to identify the projects where we can best support the growth of innovations into startup companies in Finland. Additionally, we partner with small biopharma companies to discover and develop new medicines.

What are the responsibilities of the scientific team at FDDC?

  • Engagement with the scientific community: We identify collaborations that benefit most from our drug discovery expertise, investment models, and networks
  • Scientific evaluation: We assess targets, technologies, and drug discovery projects originating from Finnish innovations
  • Project planning and coordination: We coordinate drug discovery projects at service providers, including assay setup, optimization of compound properties, medicinal chemistry, and compound testing
  • Staying updated: We keep up to date on scientific topics, drug discovery trends and competitive landscape

How are projects evaluated at FDDC?
We carefully evaluate the science behind the candidate cases. Our extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry enables us to spot the key elements of successful projects. This is the reason why we utilize a framework adapted from the pharmaceutical industry for target selection and prioritization (see pdf below).

It is important to understand that no single target or project can meet all criteria, and no guidance manual can cover all possible scenarios. Instead, each target needs to be evaluated case by case. Using our target selection criteria, we build on project strengths and mitigate risks early by identifying knowledge gaps and gathering appropriate networks or tools to tackle the challenges. Practically this means open discussion with the inventors, brainstorming within the FDDC team or with our broad networks if needed.

What kind of projects are supported by the FDDC?

  • We only work on drug discovery indicated to cure or treat a disease
  • We focus on Finnish innovations and/or startup biopharma formation in Finland
  • We are agnostic to therapy area and modality
  • We add the most value to early phase drug discovery projects, from target idea or early hit molecule, to late lead optimization phase

Download pdf to learn more about target criteria used by FDDC

Download PDF