The Candidate Center

The CANDIDATE Center operates as a translational drug development unit within Amsterdam Neuroscience, accessible to all principal investigators within Amsterdam Neuroscience. The center provides expertise and facilities for target discovery and drug development for CNS indications. Investigators can approach the CANDIDATE Center with ideas about disease mechanisms or model systems, which can be a starting point for a screening and drug development effort. Depending on the project, a target discovery/validation effort is initiated or a drug screen will be developed. This will entail genetic CRISPR screens to identify novel targets for a phenotype of interest, or the design, optimization and execution of drug screens using enzymatic assays. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to jointly generate novel composition of matter intellectual property, i.e. drugs. Additionally, with every project an effort for the development of a companion diagnostic is started.