BioAscent Discovery

Overview

BioAscent Discovery is a leading provider of integrated drug discovery services founded in 2013 and based at the former Organon/MSD R&D site in Newhouse, Scotland, UK. The company serves clients ranging from small virtual biotechs to large established pharmaceutical companies.

Core Capabilities

Chemistry & Computational Services

• Medicinal chemistry and synthetic chemistry
• Computational chemistry and in silico discovery (launched 2021; experienced 27% revenue growth)
• Physicochemical profiling and DMPK
• Compound management, logistics, and shipping
• Access to in-house diversity, fragment, and chemogenomic libraries
• External library selection and sourcing

Biology & Assay Development

• De novo assay development
• Biochemical, biophysical, and cellular assay development
• Target analysis and bespoke screening strategies
• Compound screening including high-throughput screening (HTS)
• Flow cytometry (newly enhanced with NovoCyte 3000 Agilent instrument, installed February 2025)
• Immune profiling, cell cycle analysis, and target validation
• Multi-parameter cell analysis with up to 17 parameters

Protein Science

• Protein production
• Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and biophysics
• Structural biology

Specialized Focus Areas

• Mitochondrial biology
• GPCR drug discovery
• CNS drug discovery
• AI and machine learning applications in drug design

Differentiation

BioAscent emphasizes science-led, integrated discovery with close collaboration between chemistry, biosciences, and computational teams to accelerate timelines, reduce costs, and improve success likelihood. The company maintains in-house compound libraries and recently expanded capabilities with advanced flow cytometry instrumentation.