DRUG DISCOVERY
Organic and medicinal chemistry expertise supports drug discovery
ChemOvation is an experienced provider of high-quality medicinal and synthetic organic chemistry services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The company’s founder and CEO, Dr Ian Matthews, describes the company’s areas of expertise, its business philosophy and its vision for the future.
ChemOvation, an experienced provider of high-quality medicinal and synthetic organic chemistry services, was set up in 1999 with financial assistance from the Novartis Venture Fund with the aim of developing a business supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with their early-stage drug discovery chemistry. The company initially targeted three markets, the UK, the USA and Japan, and began by offering novel virtual compound libraries for ‘cherry picking’ and synthesis. According to Dr Ian Matthews, the company’s CEO, it became apparent that this was a difficult basis for a chemistry business and ChemOvation then focused more on developing an organic and medicinal chemistry business. However, the company’s first contracts generated cash flow and got it up and running, and it is still capitalising on some of that chemistry even now. “Once founded, we quickly won business
from Roche in the UK, Schering-Plough in the USA and, through our agent, a contract with an unknown Japanese company,” explains Matthews. “These were mainly for library synthesis but also synthesis of a range of individual molecules. With the continuing development of more sophisticated and effective molecular modelling software, the need to synthesise large libraries of compounds had diminished in favour of small focused, modelling-led libraries. “In the past 10 years, the pharmaceutical giants have contracted in size, and have consequently outsourced more, and are continuing to do so. This has created an environment that has led to an increase in the numbers of smaller companies, the biotechs, usually focused on one therapeutic area, which are then purchased by Big Pharma if they are successful. This is perfectly demonstrated by what happened to
ChemOvation,” he says. In 2001, ChemOvation was bought by
KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, UK- based biotech working on DNA repair enzymes for cancer therapy. ChemOvation became the chemistry/ drug discovery and development arm of KuDOS but was also able to expand the service side of the business and develop a higher profile. The expanded company had multiple business focuses such as molecular modelling, chemical and process development, medicinal chemistry and custom synthesis. The success of the drug discovery work undertaken at KuDOS was such that it led to its purchase by AstraZeneca in 2004 and around the same time the service side of the business, embodied by ChemOvation, was spun out and ChemOvation became an independent company once again.
Continuing a successful model “ChemOvation has continued with this model, aiming to provide chemistry resource to small biotechs and support their drug discovery programmes, says Matthews. “We provided such support for Proximagen, a London, UK- based biotech working in the neurological area, over a five-year period. During this time, we also worked on small synthetic projects for various companies as well as drug discovery for Roche at Nutley, New Jersey, USA, and our work with Roche resulted in co- authorship of two scientific papers. Over the twelve or so years ChemOvation has been in business, we have also amassed a small screening collection, through synthesis and acquisition, which has been and continues to be a start for medicinal chemistry projects for small biotechs.”
ChemOvation has worked on a diverse collection of projects from a diverse customer base such as Big Pharma, small biotechs, other chemistry service providers, catalogue companies, analytical companies, generics
28 sp2 Inter-Active July/August 2012
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