Chemistry expert Onyx Scientific has announced a collaboration with a purification specialist that will see the company broaden its offering to the global pharmaceutical and biotech industry.

The contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) has struck-up a strategic alliance with UK-based Reach Separations, which will allow it to deliver more specialist purification and separation services to bolster its early stage development services.

As part of the deal, Onyx Scientific will be now able to offer custom separation for companies in drug discovery and intermediate environments. This includes chiral, reverse phase and normal phase chromatography using Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) and High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).

With MHRA and FDA licensed facilities in the UK and India, Onyx Scientific supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies from medicinal chemistry and preclinical through Phase I-III, scaling-up to large scale commercial API production.

Denise Bowser, commercial director at Onyx Scientific, said: "We were very impressed with the major equipment investment at Reach Separations and the team's exceptional knowledge in understanding our clients' challenges in small scale purification.

"Given this is an area that we have limited expertise and one that clients look to outsource, it made perfect sense for us to plug the gap and complement our existing services by working with Reach Separations.

"We expect this strategic partnership will play an important role in giving our clients quicker access to these types of services but with the added benefit of knowing it will be managed by us as part of the overall project," added Denise.

Reach Separations is located in BioCity in Nottingham, which is one of Europe's largest bioscience incubators that currently hosts over 70 companies and has a rich heritage in drug discovery.

The company's technical group is led by purification specialist and Technical Director Phil Abbott. He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for almost 20 years, including several years at AstraZeneca as a Separation Science Group Leader.

He said: "We are delighted to be working alongside Onyx Scientific given the company's fine reputation in contract medicinal chemistry, scale-up and manufacturing for the world's drug development industry.

"We have strong experience in the pharmaceutical outsourcing sector so understand the challenges and issues clients face. Our role will be to bring our expertise to the table and work as part of the Onyx team to ensure clients' requirements are always met and timelines never exceeded."

Working as a preferred partner of many of the world's top pharma firms, Onyx Scientific's UK labs in North East England deal with complex chemistry and deliver early stage programs involving custom synthesis, lead optimisation, process development, solid-state chemistry and GMP API synthesis. It is then able to scale-up, internally tech transfer and provide increased efficiency for clients from its commercial manufacturing sites in India.
 

For more information about Onyx Scientific - visit www.onyxipca.com

For more information about Reach Separations - visit www.reachseparations.com