Domainex Ltd announces the appointment of Dr Joanne McCudden as Head of Business Development. Joanne joins the Company with a wealth of experience in the biotech sector having held business development positions at Cobra Biomanufacturing PLC and, more recently, with SynCo Bio Partners where she was the Director of Sales and Marketing.

Dr McCudden commented "Domainex offers high-quality, added-value, drug discovery services to the global biotechnology and pharma marketplaces. Its technical expertise is superb; shown by the success realised on behalf of its clients and with its own internal drug research portfolio . I am very pleased to join Domainex, especially at this exciting time of growth. It is a pivotal moment for the business, and I look forward to helping to expand its client base, whilst supporting the outlicensing effort for the internal programmes."

Dr Eddy Littler CEO of Domainex said "Domainex is entering a new phase in its development. Our service division is undergoing a significant expansion with a number of new contracts, and our drug discovery division has advanced its first project - on the kinase targets IKKe and TBK1 - to a point where we will seek to outlicense the project during 2011. We are delighted that Joanne is joining Domainex in order to spearhead our future Business Development activities".

About Domainex - http://www.domainex.co.uk/
Domainex uses unique and proprietary technologies to resolve common bottlenecks facing the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the post-genomic era. Major discovery 'gaps' exist between the vast amount of genomic information that is now available, the accessibility of the corresponding proteins for use in target validation and drug discovery, and the identification of robust hits in a cost effective manner. Founded in 2002, Domainex is a privately owned company with laboratories in Cambridge, England, and offices in the London Bioscience Innovation Centre.

• Domainex has developed a number of platform technologies specifically aimed at enabling biotech or university groups who have exciting new drug targets. Its Combinatorial Domain Hunting (CDH) technology will deliver protein constructs that are soluble, stable, and produced in high-yield - thereby opening up the path to high throughput screening, structural biology, or antibody production.
• Domainex has also developed LeadBuilder - a virtual screening approach for targets which is specifically aimed at identifying hit molecules that are ideally suited for further development.
• The experienced medicinal chemistry team has a proven track record in supporting biotech or university groups by providing expertise to take hit compounds through lead optimisation and on to candidate selection. Several compounds arising from these collaborations are currently in clinical evaluation. 
• Domainex works with clients on a fee-for-service basis. In 2010, the company secured investment to advance its own internal drug discovery pipeline based upon a number of targets in oncology. These targets are being progressed using Domainex's platform technologies.

 For more information please visit www.domainex.co.uk