Drug Discovery Services – Medicinal Chemistry & Biosciences

…Integrated Drug Discovery services, with expertise across all biological target classes, and a track record of taking drugs from concept to clinical candidate.

BioAscent’s scientists can support each key stage of the drug discovery process; from de novo assay generation, assay optimization and miniaturization; tailored hit discovery approaches including fragment, focused, and diversity-based high-throughput screening; through to hits to lead and lead optimization.

We provide a fully flexible and tailored solution to meet your needs. We deliver both stand-alone projects and fully integrated drug discovery services with the capability to take your target from concept to candidate. All intellectual property generated is owned by the customer.

The Team

The BioAscent drug discovery team is led by Dr Phil Jones. A medicinal chemist with over 30 years of drug discovery experience, Phil has held senior roles at Roche, Merck Sharpe & Dohme, Schering-Plough and Organon where he was responsible for teams delivering numerous clinical candidates. He established the European Screening Centre Newhouse at Biocity Scotland where BioAscent is based. Phil is supported by a team of expert biologists and chemists co-located in state-of-the-art laboratories on the Newhouse site. The teams experience spans multiple therapy areas and all major target classes, from project concept to clinical development. Since 2013, the team have established more than 100 biochemical and biophysical assays for drug discovery projects, and ran more than 50 hit validation/characterisation projects, and more than 25 hit-to-lead campaigns.

Services

The BioAscent team has experience of successfully working from assay development to preclinical and clinical candidate across all major therapeutic indications and biological target classes. Our key services and expertise include:

Biochemical, Biophysical & Cellular Assay Development

• Enzymes
• GPCRs
• Ion channels
• Nuclear receptors
• Protein-protein, protein-RNA & protein-DNA interactions
• Others e.g. splicing factor, chaperones
• A wide range of techniques and endpoints including:
  • all common screening modalities (Absorbance, luminescence, fluorescence, FP, HTRF, TR-FRET, Alphascreen)
  • FLIPR Tetra (Ion dyes, Aequorin)
  • Dynamic Mass Redistribution – Corning Epic®
  • Differential Scanning Fluorimetry
  • Microscale Thermophoresis – Monolith NT.Automated
  • Stable cell line development

Target analysis & bespoke screening strategies

• Design of assay cascades
• Focused library selection & iterative screening

Compound Screening

• High Throughput Screening (HTS)
• Medium Throughput Screening (MTS)
• Fragment screening
• SAR (Structure-Activity Relationship) assay screening
• Mechanism of action studies

Medicinal & Synthetic Chemistry

• Hypothesis driven compound design and synthesis
• Design and synthesis of building blocks & intermediates
• Synthesis of focused arrays & SAR seeking libraries
• Photochemistry
• Electrochemistry
• Flow synthesis
• Multiparameter optimization
• Project management
• Develop strategy for intellectual property protection

Computational Chemistry

• Virtual screening – both protein & ligand based
• HTS data triage
• Design of hit expansion sets
• Knowledge based hit generation
• Scaffold hopping
• Design of SAR expansion sets
• Patent landscape analysis
• In-silico profiling
• In-silico secondary pharmacology screening

Physicochemical Profiling & DMPK (via our preferred partner, Xenogesis)

• In-vitro & in-vivo

Data Management

• All data is fully auditable and maintained in an ISO 27001 certified secure database

Compound Management

• Expert compound management 
• Instant access to an IP-free library of ~125,000 lead like compounds via Compound Cloud

Therapeutic Areas

The BioAscent team has expertise of successfully working from assay development to preclinical and clinical candidates across a wide range of therapeutic areas, including:

• Oncology and immuno-oncology
• CNS, pain, neurodegeneration
• Anti-infectives
• Metabolic disorders
• Cardiovascular
• Dermatology
• Heritable genetic disease & other orphan indications
• Inflammation

Publications

A selection of our team’s key publications can be found here, and posters here.