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- Dr. Claire Beauvineau Honored with the CNRS Collective Crystal Award
The “Implementing Best Practices for European Chemical Library Managers” project, to which Dr. Claire Beauvineau, Platform Manager at Institut Curie’s Research Center, contributes, has received the 2026 CNRS Collective Crystal Award. The distinction recognizes six chemical library managers committed to sharing their expertise across Europe and opening up new scientific possibilities for molecules created in laboratories.
In chemistry laboratories, some molecules may prove valuable several years after they are synthesized, helping researchers investigate a biological mechanism or explore a potential therapeutic avenue. This is where chemical libraries come in: they preserve and document this scientific heritage and make it available for new research projects. This mission relies on technical expertise, shared tools, and the work of numerous professionals.
The CNRS Collective Crystal Award specifically recognizes this type of teamwork. It is presented to teams of research support staff whose achievements stand out for their quality, innovation, and reach.
In 2026, the award recognizes a national group of six members of the National Chemical Library network, representing five French institutions and particularly involved in sharing its methods across Europe. At Institut Curie, the group is represented by Dr. Claire Beauvineau, Manager of the CurieCoreTech Chemical Library platform. For this project, she works alongside Dr. Rodolphe Alves de Sousa1, Séverine Amand2, Christine Maulay-Bailly2, Dr. Bruno Didier4, and Laurent Robin5.
“This award bears six names, but it recognizes the work of an entire community. I am delighted that it highlights the role of chemical library managers and everything we can contribute to research,” emphasizes Claire Beauvineau.
Their project draws on the expertise developed by the National Chemical Library, which brings together some 50 research teams and houses more than 100,000 compounds and 16,000 natural extracts. Having become a model for several European partners, it now shares its practices and tools with them. The group helps train partner teams and adapt L-g-Chimio, a management software tool made available free of charge across Europe. Claire Beauvineau was particularly involved in revising the Chemical Library Managers’ White Paper and developing procedures for packaging a representative collection of 10,000 compounds.
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At Institut Curie, the CurieCoreTech Chemical Library platform houses approximately 13,700 molecules from the chemistry units in Paris and Orsay. Research teams can draw on this resource to identify compounds that act on a biological target. When a promising lead emerges, Claire Beauvineau brings her chemist’s perspective to assess its potential and support its optimization, either to deepen our understanding of living systems or contribute to the development of drug candidates.
1 Laboratory of Pharmacological and Toxicological Chemistry and Biochemistry/Université Paris Cité
2 Communication Molecules and Adaptation of Micro-organisms Laboratory/Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle/Paris
3 Strasbourg Integrative Biological Chemistry Platform
4 Institute of Organic and Analytical Chemistry/Orléans
