Saffron Walden, UK, 17th November 2016 / Saffron Walden, UK, 17th November 2016 / Sir Simon Campbell, CBE FRS FMedSci, was welcomed by staff and guests when he officially opened The Domainex Medicines Research Centre on Friday 11th November 2016. The new facility, located at Chesterford Research Park, has been home to Domainex since August 2016 and doubles the laboratory space available to the company’s growing team of scientists.
Sir Simon Campbell, along with three of the founders of Domainex, Laurence Pearl, Paul Driscoll and David Selwood, and 50 guests from partner research institutions, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies were given a preview of new drug discovery services to be launched in 2017 and a tour of the state-of-the-art facilities, including Domainex's proprietary Combinatorial Domain Hunting (CDH) laboratory.
Sir Simon Campbell commented, ‘I was delighted to join the team here at Domainex to celebrate this key milestone. There are many challenges to drug design and delivery, challenges that are being effectively tackled by multi-disciplinary teams spanning chemistry and biology, industry and academia. The scientists working here at Domainex are building these important strategic alliances, and carrying out research to enable faster discovery of new drugs that meet the medical needs of the 21st century.‘
‘The growing demand for new medicines is placing increasing importance on companies such as ours,’ added Tom Mander, COO for Domainex. ‘Our investment in this new facility and the expansion of our technical capabilities with new staff and new technologies, clearly illustrates our ambition and our commitment to providing excellence, creativity and innovation to our partners. It was great to see so many people here today, enjoying the new facility, meeting our scientists and seeing our laboratories in operation.’
Trevor Perrior, CSO of Domainex, commented, ‘We are excited to be introducing a range of new technologies over the coming months, taking full advantage of the additional space in our new laboratories. For example, the combination of our recently-acquired high-throughput microscale thermophoresis instrument with our CDH platform gives us a unique position in protein production, characterisation, and compound and fragment screening that substantially enhances the speed and quality of this type of work. We are also looking forward to introducing FLIPR-based screening services for GPCRs and ion-channels in the near future. All of these new capabilities are very complementary to our strengths in medicinal chemistry.“
ENDS
Press enquiries
For Domainex, please contact:
Dr. Thomas Mander MBA
Chief Operating Officer
T: +44 (0)1223 743174
E: tom.mander@domainex.co.uk
For media enquiries, please contact:
Deborah Cockerill
Sciad Communications
T: 07930 317729
E: deborah@sciad.com
Emma Pickup
Sciad Communications
T: 07917193837
E: Emma@sciad.com
Notes to Editor
Images from the opening are available upon request.
About Domainex
Established in 2001 as a spin-out from University College London, Birkbeck College and the Institute of Cancer Research, Domainex Ltd. is a Cambridge-based, privately-owned small-molecule therapeutics company that provides integrated drug research services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic partners globally. Services cover a wide span of the drug research value chain, from disease target validation to pre-clinical candidate nomination. Domainex's services include recombinant protein expression and use of its proprietary technology platform, Combinatorial Domain Hunting to identify soluble protein fragments for structural biology and assay development. Hit finding activities encompass assay development and screening utilising its Bioassay Builder and LeadBuilder platforms. The core of the service offering is undertaking multi-parameter medicinal chemistry optimisation of hits and leads under the mantra ‘every compound counts’, which can save up to 30% on the average industry time from target to candidate.
Additionally, Domainex is investing in developing its own therapeutic compounds for out-licensing in two specific areas: 1) Inhibitors of the kinases TBK1 & IKK epsilon to treat inflammatory conditions such as COPD and Lupus; 2) the emerging epigenetic target class of lysine methyltransferases implicated in oncology and other diseases, where to date Domainex has built a portfolio of assets encompassing novel chemical matter, proprietary assays and X-ray crystal structures.
For more information please visit www.domainex.co.uk