BioFocus announced today that its Compound Focus, Inc. subsidiary has signed a compound management services agreement with the University of Nottingham, UK.  Under the terms of this agreement, Compound Focus will select, source, acquire, perform quality control checks and reformat a compound collection before returning to the Managed Chemical Compound Collection (MCCC) at the University of Nottingham.  These services will be provided by Compound Focus' compound management facility in South San Francisco, USA.

"In addition to aspects of compound management, the University of Nottingham has accessed BioFocus' expertise in computational chemistry to aid compound selection," said Scott Synder, Compound Focus General Manager.  "The agreement not only demonstrates our ability to perform compound management on a global scale but also to integrate other aspects of the BioFocus offering to help achieve our clients' objectives."

Professor Peter Fischer, Director of the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Nottingham commented: "In the first instance we sought to acquire a base collection as a maximally diverse subset of the vast number of screening compounds available from commercial sources. After considering a number of procurement options, we chose to work with BioFocus, which combines leading expertise in both chemoinformatics and in compound management, to assemble this base collection for us."  

About Managed Chemical Compound Collection (MCCC), University of Nottingham 

The newly established Managed Chemical Compound Collection (MCCC) represents a cornerstone of the University of Nottinghams' Drug Discovery Priority Group, which integrates diverse activities across the University aimed at translating new insights in basic biomedical science into new drugs.  The University has made a major investment to provide a fully integrated and automated compound storage and handling infrastructure that underpins the MCCC. The longer-term aim for the MCCC is to provide an efficient and diverse compound screening resource for researchers at the University, as well as partners in academia and industry.   

About Compound Focus   

Compound Focus, Inc. is a service division of BioFocus and provides a range of compound management services.  It is home to sample collections owned by government, academic and commercial organizations and to the National Institutes of Health Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository.  

About BioFocus  

BioFocus aims to expand its partners' drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-drug candidate discovery process.  This is achieved through a comprehensive discovery platform, which includes target discovery in human primary cells, focused as well as diverse compound libraries, in vitro and cell-based screening, structural biology, medicinal chemistry, ADME/PK services, supported by unique chemogenomic and informatics tools, and compound library acquisition, storage and distribution services.  As a service division of Galapagos, BioFocus has over 245 employees in four countries worldwide.  More info at: www.biofocus.com