Compounds Platform (ComPlat): Management, storage and sharing of chemical compounds: Installation of an interdisciplinary compound-facility to open available resources of research groups to scientists for a long-term usage and to initiate novel collaborations.

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Stefan Bräse; Dr. Nicole Jung
• Subject Area: Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation ; Inorganic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation ; Cell Biology
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284178167

We aim to install a national, but international in the long term, institution named ComPlat at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) that manages the preservation and research-related usage of compounds that have been produced in different academic projects. During the first year of the funding period, the initial requirements for the project will be installed and the operation of the platform will be shown for only a few additional universities in addition to the current user group. Later in the second and third year, the Compounds Platform (ComPlat) will be open nationwide for interested universities and single research groups, and if the capacity allows it, then additional international requests will be accepted as well. The new institution will prevent chemical compounds, which should be considered as highly valuable species, to be protected and to be reused, rather than sinking into oblivion and not being available for further research. While molecules with lead-like character are searched and used by many (international) institutions, which are defined as compound storage or screening facilities, the Compound Platform (ComPlat) will not focus only on the trendy, preselected types of molecules for pharmaceutical development, but on every stable compound. The submitted molecules will be indexed, stored and offered on demand to guarantee access to a virtual and physical platform for the exchange and sharing of research results for on the hand research groups with the need of particular compounds and on the other hand synthetic chemists. The platform will preserve reference material, support the realization of research projects with high need of chemical entities (e.g. screening) and will offer compounds for preliminary work to initiate new collaborations. The procedure that has been established successfully in Karlsruhe will be extended to selected national and international groups through the herein applied funding to enable the participation of a larger community of users and to give access to all academic researchers to this novel level of platform. The equipment fleet needed to handle, store, manage, but also perform the quality control, the purification and the distribution of the compounds, as well as the essential staff are already available for free. The development plan covers the following modules, which will enable the extension of the KIT-platform and the efficient use of the infrastructures: (1) support concerning legal affairs (generation of basic contracts as e.g. material transfer agreements), (2) offer and distribute glassware to the partner universities/collaborating groups (logistics), (3) operate an online platform to register compounds and a virtual compound library, (4) preserve and index the submitted compounds, (5) analysis, (6) distribute services and compound handling, (7) use and operation of the equipment required for points (3)-(6).

• DFG Programme: Core Facilities