Enamine and PAL team up on fragment screening

By AI, Created 4:58 PM UTC, May 18, 2026, /AGP/ – Enamine and South Korea’s Pohang Accelerator Laboratory have formed a collaboration to speed crystallographic fragment screening and fragment-based lead discovery. The deal pairs PAL’s public research infrastructure with Enamine’s compound libraries and chemistry services to lower access barriers for academic and industry users.

Why it matters: - The collaboration could speed early-stage drug discovery by pairing advanced crystallography with commercially designed fragment libraries. - The model lowers access barriers for academic researchers and industry partners that need structural data and fast chemistry follow-up. - The partnership also shows how public research infrastructure can support private-sector innovation without building a separate discovery platform.

What happened: - Enamine Ltd. partnered with the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory, a government funded, non profit research facility in the Republic of Korea. - The two organizations established a collaborative framework for crystallographic fragment screening. - The announcement was made May 13, 2026. - PAL will provide open access to advanced crystallography infrastructure as part of its public mission. - Enamine will contribute commercial compound libraries and rapid hit-to-lead chemistry services.

The details: - The collaboration is built around fragment-based lead discovery, or FBLD. - PAL’s role centers on public access to crystallography infrastructure and screening expertise. - Enamine’s role centers on experimentally refined fragment libraries and follow-on chemistry. - The collaboration includes automated screening workflows. - The partnership offers flexible cooperation models tailored to research needs. - Enamine says its global resources will support rapid fragment progression and hit-to-lead work. - Enamine’s compound inventory includes 4.7 million screening compounds in stock and 350,000 building blocks in stock. - PAL operates synchrotron radiation sources that support structural biology, materials science, chemistry and related fields. - PAL provides open access to advanced experimental infrastructure for academic and industrial users.

Between the lines: - The partnership blends subsidized public infrastructure with private discovery tools, which may make structural screening more accessible for smaller research groups. - The model also creates a tighter path from fragment hit to lead optimization, reducing the handoff gap that can slow early discovery. - Enamine’s focus on synthetically tractable fragments suggests the collaboration is aimed at compounds that can move quickly into medicinal chemistry.

What’s next: - The collaboration is expected to support more structure-based research by combining experimental data with chemical follow-up. - Researchers using the framework can pursue fragment hits toward chemical probes and lead compounds. - PAL and Enamine are positioning the partnership as a platform for broader academic and industrial use of crystallographic fragment screening.

The bottom line: - The deal links public scientific infrastructure with private compound libraries to make fragment-based drug discovery faster, cheaper to access and easier to scale.