Developing the Biomolecular Screening Facility at the EPFL into the Chemical Biology Screening Platform for Switzerland

The Biomolecular Screening Facility (BSF) is a multidisciplinary laboratory created in 2006 at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) to perform medium and high throughput screening in life sciences-related projects. The BSF was conceived and developed to meet the needs of a wide range of researchers, without privileging a particular biological discipline or therapeutic area. The facility has the necessary infrastructure, multidisciplinary expertise and flexibility to perform large screening programs using small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and chemical collections in the areas of chemical biology, systems biology and drug discovery. In the framework of the National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR) Chemical Biology, the BSF is hosting 'ACCESS', the Academic Chemical Screening Platform of Switzerland that provides the scientific community with chemical diversity, screening facilities and know-how in chemical genetics. In addition, the BSF started its own applied research axes that are driven by innovation in thematic areas related to preclinical drug discovery and discovery of bioactive probes.