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Chemistry Synthesis for Drug Discovery
Chemists who work on your series as their own, and a fee-for-service route for the compounds you simply need made.
What slows a series down
Rarely the ideas. Usually the fact that half the compounds a team designs are hard to make, and the chemistry to find that out takes weeks that the program does not have. The cycle stretches, the SAR thins, and decisions get made on fewer data points than anyone wanted.
Our medicinal chemists work inside that loop rather than at the end of it. Designs come back with a view on synthetic feasibility attached, and where the route is genuinely uncertain we model it before committing bench time.
The platform
- Around 9,000 chemists across five research sites, providing medicinal chemistry research services as full-time equivalents and custom synthesis as fee-for-service
- 440,000+ compounds delivered a year, from milligram to kilogram scale
- Support at every stage of discovery: target validation, hit generation, hit-to-lead and lead optimization
- Full synthetic capability across a broad spectrum of chemical matter and a wide range of complexity
- A dedicated group of experts specializing in route design and troubleshooting in organic synthesis
Hit-to-lead and lead optimization
We support every stage from target validation through hit generation, hit-to-lead and lead optimization, at scales from milligrams to kilograms, across a wide range of chemistry.
Keeping a live series supplied is as much a logistics problem as a chemistry one. Analytical, purification, reagent, and building-block teams sit alongside the chemists, with a logistics operation behind them, and compounds move through a managed supply operation.
Late-stage functionalization
Changing a scaffold late without rebuilding the synthesis is the difference between a four-week SAR cycle and a one-week one. Late-stage functionalization introduces functional groups directly onto advanced intermediates under mild, selective conditions: C–H alkylation, fluorination, halogenation, oxidation, trifluoromethylation. It reaches targets conventional routes cannot.
Knowing where the molecule will react before committing the intermediate makes it work. We run quantum-mechanical analysis of the advanced intermediate first, to assess reactivity and regioselectivity for the C–H activation of interest, then process the reaction at high throughput in our catalysis or photochemistry laboratories, with rapid parallel LCMS analysis and purification. Where the product structure is ambiguous, QM and DP4-AI assist.
Custom synthesis to an agreed specification
Custom synthesis sounds routine. The difficulty is in delivering it reliably, at scale, and on time. When a compound arrives late, off-spec, or short of the quantity you need, the program loses a month.
Fee-for-service works on a defined deliverable: structure, quantity, purity, date, agreed before the work starts. Scales run from milligrams to kilograms and the chemistry covers a broad spectrum of chemical matter.
Analytical, purification, reagent, and building-block resources sit alongside the synthetic teams rather than in a queue behind them. A compound that needs an unusual purification does not become a separate project with its own timeline, and a synthesis that needs an uncommon building block does not wait on procurement — in most cases we can make it.
Reagents and building blocks
Programs stall on materials as often as on chemistry. Our catalogue of research chemicals, reagents, and building blocks is searchable through our internal compounds catalog, and where a building block does not exist, we can make it.
That is usually the faster answer for a building block that is heavily substituted, stereochemically defined, or otherwise not held by a catalogue supplier.
When the molecule needs a specialist
Some molecule classes are not a question of capacity. Fluorination that will not go selectively, a ring that will not close, a lipid that will not purify. We run eleven dedicated platforms for those, each staffed by chemists who work that class full-time.
How we work with your team
Full-time equivalent — named chemists dedicated to your program, who learn your series and stay with it. This is how most medicinal chemistry work runs.
Fee-for-service — a defined deliverable at an agreed specification, for a discrete piece of work.
The cycle time you actually feel
Design-make-test-analyze is where a discovery program either builds momentum or stalls. Every week between a design and its data is a week the biology team spends waiting, and the cost is not the synthesis — it is the question that gets answered late, or not at all.
Shortening that loop is the job. It is why medicinal chemistry, computational design, and analytical support sit in one team rather than three queues.