AEGIS Consortium

The AEGIS consortium consists of eleven Beneficiaries hosting and training fifteen Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) and is completed by sixteen associated Partner Organisations which provide support in training and in vitro and in vivo validation of the targets.

The AEGIS network aims to educate ESRs in the field of Early Drug Discovery (EED) by constructing a sustainable training network gathering the whole innovation value chain.

This will be implemented by a highly effective level of interdisciplinary collaboration between academic and industry partners in EDD. It is thus critical to train a new generation of Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in multidisciplinary and integrated approaches to the drug discovery process. The ESRs of AEGIS will be able to implement a large range of experimental and computational methods to shape future research to meet needs in current industrial research and to succeed in finding new cures to global heath threats. Thus, AEGIS ESRs will be highly valued employees for pharmaceutical industry.

The AEGIS consortium has five main overall aims:

Aim 1: Train a new generation of researchers in integrated structure-based drug discovery in an open innovation collaboration between academic and industrial partners for enhancing their employability

Aim 2: Offer ESRs access to world-class expertise and infrastructure in an intersectoral and multidisciplinary research environment

Aim 3: Accelerate and improve early drug discovery by developing new methodology

Aim 4: Identify leads for targets involved in rare and neglected diseases of urgent medical need

Aim 5: Form a sustainable network of academic and industrial drug discovery centres of excellence and ESRs that will last beyond the AEGIS timeline (see Section 2.2).