Over 50% increase in smaller biopharma and start-up clients in 2021 YTD

BioAscent, the leading provider of integrated drug discovery services, reports a 50% increase in demand from biotech and “virtual” biotech companies for its outsourced compound management services so far in 2021. This follows a doubling of compound management services from 2018 to 2020 – also primarily driven by biotech customers.

The company provides compound management to clients in the UK, US, Europe, and Australia, with new US biotech customers becoming the biggest contributor to the company’s compound management growth. Key to this success with biotechs of all sizes is BioAscent’s ability to offer easy and cost-effective access to big-pharma calibre compound management capabilities and expertise at its €20 million facility.

BioAscent manages libraries of all sizes – ranging from tens to hundreds-of-thousands of compounds. With demonstrable success in cost-effectively and securely managing compounds to accelerate design-make-test cycles for its clients, 2021 has seen exceptional milestones:

• Compound management revenue has grown by 50%, primarily driven by biotech customers
• Biotech customer base has also grown by over 50%. One third of customers are US-based biotechs, and this proportion is growing
• 80% of its largest customers benefit from the company’s integrated discovery services, including compound management plus chemistry and/or biology
• Customer feedback stresses key drivers in using BioAscent’s compound management services include: flexibility, security, speed of processing and delivery, combined with robust inventory management and ordering

“Key to our success is that we offer a secure infrastructure and rapid service that is significantly ahead of other CROs”, said Paul Smith, BioAscent’s CEO. “Uniquely, we offer a number of benefits that are especially critical to innovative biotechs working with a network of CROs. For example, there is no minimum library size or minimum fee. Inventories are always up-to-date and available for secure online ordering, and compounds can be stored securely in a range of formats, including vials, 96-well, 384-well and 1536-well plates, and plated in test-ready formats, including assay ready plates. And our speed of service is outstanding. We deliver to in-house labs or global CRO partners based in East Coast US and the EU in under 24 hrs, with fast access to Asian hubs.” 

To maintain its position as a leading provider of outsourced compound management services, the company has invested over £1m in its compound management infrastructure and grown its expert team by 40% over the last two years. These investments in facility and team enable BioAscent to offer its customers peace-of-mind that their compounds are aggregated and stored securely, their inventory is up-to-date and trackable, and compounds can be accessed and delivered quickly and easily.

About BioAscent Discovery Ltd.

Founded in 2013, BioAscent is a leading provider of integrated drug discovery services based at the former Organon / Merck Sharpe and Dohme (MSD) R&D site in Newhouse, Scotland. For the past two years, BioAscent has been listed as the top-performing Pre-clinical Contract Research Organization in the Pharma Fast 50 report from financial services company, Alantra, which ranks the UK’s fastest-growing, privately-owned pharmaceutical businesses according to revenue growth over the previous years. Our drug discovery services include de novo assay development, target analysis and bespoke screening strategies, compound screening, medicinal and synthetic chemistry, computational chemistry and data management. Our team of expert scientists has experience of successfully working from assay development through to preclinical and clinical candidates across all biological target classes and major therapeutic indications. As part of its compound management service, BioAscent currently holds and manages over 1 million compounds for our customers, in both liquid and solid formats. Through the Compound Cloud service, the company provides rapid access to an IP-free library of ~125,000 lead like compounds in screening-ready format. 

Since 2013, the BioAscent team has been responsible for:

    >150 biochemical and biophysical assays for drug discovery projects

    >50 hit validation/characterisation projects

    >30 hit-to-lead campaigns

    >100,000 screening plates delivered to our global customers/partners