As a charity, we want to make sure that more science is developed and makes a difference to patients’ lives. To achieve this we have invested heavily in our drug discovery and diagnostics development centres.

Through our Call for Targets campaign we look for promising drug or therapeutic targets. By collaborating with us you gain access to the expertise, facilities and resources needed to develop your research in a commercial environment. We are now offering £100,000 awards to labs where collaborations successfully meet project launch stage.

Call for Targets deadlines are:
12 September
14 November

Speak to us if you have research with the potential to be:

Small molecule drugs

You will bring biology and disease expertise and potentially access to relevant tools, assays and models. We provide the expertise and resources for all aspects of preclinical drug discovery.

Therapeutic antibodies

Our expertise spans from generation of new antibodies to delivering a humanised and fully characterised lead candidate. We have humanised 4 drugs currently on the market.

We invest in promising research

We are looking for research projects that can demonstrate:

  • Novel therapeutic targets in any disease areas
  • New approaches to modulating a known disease target
  • Strong evidence linking the target to human disease
  • Evidence from model systems showing that modulation of the target has a therapeutically relevant effect
  • Disease biology expertise, such as access to enabling assays, reagents and disease models
  • New technologies that could speed up drug discovery or allow us to tackle diseases and targets that can’t currently be treated

Working collaboratively with researchers

Applications

Target identification

Academic scientists submit proposals on promising new molecular drug targets. We also work with university TTOs to review existing portfolios.

Evaluation

Our due diligence team assesses the potential of each proposal through a two-stage application process and projects are selected by a panel of drug discovery experts.

Development

Assay development

Our biologists adapt and develop industry standard assays needed for screening, hit confirmation and functional characterisation of new molecules.

Screening

We carry out high-throughput screening using proprietary in-house compound libraries. For antibody projects we screen antibodies for binding to the target antigen.

Hit to lead optimisation

Our medicinal chemists develop structure-activity relationships (SAR) to improve potency, solubility and physico-chemical properties of hit series to turn them into drug-like molecules. For antibody projects we generate humanised or fully human antibodies and engineer them to obtain optimal binding affinity, functional efficacy and robust biophysical properties to generate a lead candidate.

Proof of concept

We evaluate our candidate compounds and antibodies in a range of relevant models, including human tissue, to demonstrate disease relevance and target engagement.

Partnering

We develop novel IP an a robust supporting data package suitable for partnering to pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies.

Accessing our expertise

Teams of nearly 80 scientists in our new Centre for Therapeutics.

Discovery offering:

  • ADME/DMPK
  • Assay development
  • Antibody biophysical characterisation
  • Antibody engineering
  • Antibody humanisation
  • High-throughput screening
  • Medicinal chemistry
  • Pharmacology
  • Small molecule libraries
  • Structural biology in silico screening

Screening against our compound library

120,000+ compounds, including:

  • Annotated sets of pharmacologically active compounds
  • Approved drugs
  • Fragments
  • Ion channel focused compounds
  • Kinase targeting compounds
  • Natural products
  • Protein-protein interaction targeting compounds

Working together

If you are interested in finding out more about any of these areas, please get in touch with Kevin Buchan, Derek Sheader or Meera Swami on +44 (0) 207 391 2826