InhibOx, a spin-out of Oxford, U.K., and Cosmic Discoveries, the independent service arm of the Institute of Life Sciences in Hyderabad, India, have formed a strategic partnership to deliver drug-discovery services, incorporating computational, medicinal and synthetic chemistry design capabilities.

Both companies, linked to academic institutes, have built their services on advanced proprietary science and technology.

Computational chemistry service organizations tend to operate in isolation, leaving their customers to handle compound acquisition or synthesis. Similarly, medicinal chemistry providers often use standard, off-the-shelf molecular modeling systems and databases, with only a small team of specialist users, lacking access to advanced, proprietary systems and breadth of expertise.

InhibOx is pioneering the use of cloud computing to offer rigorous, full-spectrum computer-aided drug discovery capabilities.  Cosmic Discoveries’ medicinal and synthetic chemistry expertise spans major therapeutic areas and numerous disease-relevant targets and mechanisms.

“InhibOx is extremely proud to enter into partnership with such a prestigious research establishment. Their medicinal and synthetic chemistry insights give InhibOx the scope not only to design lead libraries but to deliver samples built from innovative, well-validated chemistries,” said Professor Graham Richards, chairman & founder of InhibOx and former chairman of chemistry at Oxford University.

Professor Javed Iqbal, president & founder of Cosmic Discoveries and former research scientist and global head of discovery chemistry at Dr Reddy’s laboratory, said, “This strategic partnership allows Cosmic Discoveries to offer design and build services based on a far more diverse set of starting propositions, derived from an innovative and wider chemistry space, tuned to our unique synthetic and medicinal chemistry capabilities.”

The two companies also will collaborate on the design of new candidate molecules in support of internal research projects at Cosmic Discoveries.