Sygnature Discovery and Pneumolabs partner in drug development services

17 May 2012

Nottingham-based Sygnature Discovery Limited and contract research company Pneumolabs (UK) Limited have entered into a strategic alliance to provide a fully-integrated drug discovery service to accelerate clients’ drug discovery programmes into development.

This new alliance complements Sygnature’s existing strategic alliances with Cyprotex Discovery, a centre of excellence for in vitro ADME/toxicology, and Saretius, a pre-clinical experimental services company offering ‘gold standard’ techniques in pain, metabolic and CNS disorders, inflammatory disease and in vivo pharmacokinetics.

Dr Phillip Gardiner, CEO at Pneumolabs said, "We are pleased to have entered into a strategic alliance with Sygnature Discovery. Sygnature has established a reputation for quality science and an ability to generate real value for their clients’ drug discovery programmes. In addition, we have been collaborating with Sygnature for three years on a highly successful respiratory programme which has generated four candidate drugs, so we already have a well-established working relationship.

"Our strategic alliance combines the complementary skills of Pneumolabs, a centre of excellence for respiratory disease-focused pre-clinical research services, and Sygnature, a centre of excellence for medicinal chemistry-driven integrated drug discovery. Pneumolabs will continue to provide pre-clinical services independently, but will also be able to contribute to fully-integrated drug discovery programmes through Sygnature’s federated CRO model. Working closely together on respiratory disease-focused discovery projects, we are confident that Pneumolabs and Sygnature can advance clients’ programmes more quickly and effectively.”

Dr Simon Hirst, Sygnature’s CEO said, “Pneumolabs has gained an excellent reputation as a contract research company which provides high quality pre-clinical research services focused on respiratory diseases. The senior management each has extensive experience of drug discovery and development gained at GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bayer, Merck and Etiologics.

"They have initiated and led numerous projects which have successfully progressed compounds from early stage drug discovery into clinical development. The close working relationship that we have already established with Pneumolabs will be cemented through this new strategic alliance.

"It enables Sygnature Discovery to offer its customers a world class, respiratory disease-focused integrated drug discovery service where novel compounds can be designed, synthesised and screened in vitro at Sygnature, assessed at Cyprotex for their metabolic liability and toxicity, and tested at Pneumolabs in pharmocodynamic and disease-relevant in vivo models. This powerful combination of alliance partners will help advance our clients’ respiratory-focused drug discovery programmes towards development more efficiently.”