New technology and expertise are now available to UK drug discovery companies, as a result of new laboratory facilities developed by the Medicines Discovery Catapult.
The Catapult’s investment in solid-state NMR spectroscopy will provide technology previously unavailable in the country.
In addition, advanced mass spectrometry and liquid handling in the facility will support advanced screening and target validation to identify future therapies for complex diseases.
These new facilities and post-doctoral staff will enable biotechs, CROs and academic collaborators to develop complex assays and monitor molecules, drug targets and proteins.
The site at the University of Warwick has been developed alongside facilities at the Catapult’s headquarters site in Alderley Park, Cheshire.
The community will gather to work together and solve the problems that no one group can solve alone.
Chris Molloy, CEO of the Medicines Discovery Catapult, said:
“Warwick is an inventive and collaborative organisation with key centres of NMR and antimicrobial resistance research.”
“It is the right place to build a waterhole around which the community will gather to work together and solve the problems that no one group can solve alone.”
Chris Dowson, Professor of Immunobiology at the University of Warwick, said:
“This Catapult laboratory has an extraordinary amount of capability in a small space, enabling us to make great advances in microbiology, chemistry and structural biology.”
“We are already able to synthesise key reagents that allow new first in class assays to identify high value drug targets.”
The Catapult scheme is one of 11 set up by Innovate UK, the innovation agency reporting to the Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. This network of centres is designed to transform the UK’s capability for innovation in specific areas.