Fraunhofer is Europe´s largest application-oriented research organisation >25,000 FTE and operates > 67 institutes and units. The IME-SP in Hamburg is a department within the (IME). The IME operates in the applied life sciences from the molecular to the ecosystem level in the areas of pharmacy, medicine, chemistry and agriculture. The four main areas of IME-SP research are: Drug discovery; Life science informatics using Big Data approaches; Clinical trial support/in vitro diagnostic development; and Development of novel life science technologies. A strong focus of IME-SP is on assay development for biochemical and cell-based formats, assay miniaturization, high throughput screening, high content imaging assays, chemi- and bioinformatics.