BioAscent Discovery Limited’s COO, Dr Sylviane Boucharens, has been included in the BioBeat 2018 list of 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness.

Her nomination follows an incredibly successful year in which she has spearheaded the company’s expansion to become a fully integrated drug discovery CRO.

Co-founded by Dr Boucharens in 2013, BioAscent initially focused on compound management. With outsourced drug discovery growing year-on-year, in 2018 the company enacted its plan to extend services to include both medicinal chemistry and in vitrobiosciences, together with DMPK through a collaboration with XenoGesis. To lead this expanded service offering, the company made new appointments to the senior management team including Dr Phil Jones, CSO; Dr Angus Morrison, Director of Chemistry; and Dr Stuart McElroy, Director of Biosciences.

In June, BioAscent also secured £1.6m in funding from Maven Capital Partners to facilitate the company’s development through its unique offering of integrated drug discovery and compound management services.

“2018 has been the most significant year to date for us,” said Dr Boucharens. “With our experienced team and state-of-the-artfacilities, BioAscent now offers specialised services in assay development, screening, medicinal & synthetic chemistry, computational chemistry and compound management. In addition, our on-site Compound Cloud library has become the ‘go-to’ source of IP-free, lead-like pharma compounds for more and more companies. This means we can work with clients right from the earliest stages of target identification to preclinical and clinical candidate development, in all major target classes and therapeutic indications.”

Paul Smith, BioAscent’s CEO, said: “Our world-class expertise and proven ability to deliver make BioAscent an ideal partner for outsourced drug discovery. We save smaller companies from having to develop costly drug discovery capability, while larger pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies benefit from the increased cost-effectiveness, flexibility and efficiency compared to developing in-house infrastructure and research staff. Ours is a unique offering and our vision is to become a global powerhouse for the outsourced discovery of innovative medicines.”

The BioBeat 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness 2018 report emphasises the current role of women in leading, inspiring and innovating to ensure new technologies and treatments continue to improve UK research, health and society.