Sygnature Discovery's new bioscience group fully operational

5 January 2012

Nottingham, UK. Sygnature Discovery has announced that its new Bioscience group, established in August 2011, is already involved in a number of drug discovery activities for clients, including integrated discovery projects and in vitro biology-only projects.

“Our Bioscience group is now fully-operational and already contributing to Sygnature’s revenue stream,” commented Dr Simon Hirst, Chief Executive Officer. “We have medicinal chemists and bioscientists working side-by-side in the same laboratory and this is encouraging close scientific interaction and optimal communication.

"Having the ability to undertake medicinal chemistry and in vitro biology/screening ‘under one roof’ is already benefiting Sygnature’s clients by facilitating efficient design/make/test cycles during integrated drug discovery projects. This is so important for delivering successful outcomes to discovery programmes. Further integrated projects will start in the near future.”

Dr John Unitt, Head of Bioscience at Sygnature Discovery stated, “I am delighted to have joined Sygnature to establish the Bioscience group. Having gained over 20 years of drug discovery experience at AstraZeneca R&D Charnwood, working on a broad range of projects from target identification to lead optimisation, I am pleased to bring this expertise to Sygnature for the benefit of clients.

"With the closure of Charnwood in July 2011, I was able to bring my team of experienced bioscientists with me to Sygnature. This has meant that we were able to set-up our in vitro biology/screening laboratory quickly and efficiently. We have the expertise to design complete screening cascades to support Sygnature's medicinal chemistry activities and utilise industry-standard screening technologies to undertake a wide range of biochemical and cellular assays. It is an added bonus to be working alongside some former AstraZeneca medicinal chemistry colleagues who joined Sygnature earlier this year.”