Drug Discovery

At Selcia we are passionate about drug discovery. We offer you the equivalent of a big pharma discovery team with medicinal chemistry expertise able to understand all the elements that are required to make your project a success – from generating pharmacological tools to delivering robust drug candidates.

Lead Discovery

If you have a target for which you seek a chemical lead, we can use our wide-ranging screening capabilities to generate chemical starting points for optimisation. Our assay development and screening group will verify functional activity, ensuring that only quality leads enter the optimisation process. Our particular strength lies in tackling difficult targets, through the use of fragment or natural product screening, computational chemistry and outstanding medicinal chemistry expertise. We can employ conventional screening technologies.

Lead Optimisation

If you already have a chemical starting point and seek to transform it into a drug candidate, Selcia can assist you in designing a comprehensive program to ensure fast lead optimisation. In addition to Selcia’s chemistry expertise, we can provide help with assay development and screening of compounds to ensure a fast turnaround of results. We also have supporting ADME capabilities to optimise good drug properties at an early stage. In addition Selcia can manage mutually agreed subcontracted services (e.g. pharmacokinetics, toxicology, etc.). All the intellectual property generated during the project belongs to the customer and we work with your IP department to ensure the best possible protection of your intellectual property. The product we aim to deliver is a robust candidate for clinical development with strong patent coverage.

Thorough understanding of the key factors that determine success or failure in drug discovery enables us to move your projects forward and deliver robust drug candidates.

Dr Vicky Steadman, Director, Discovery, Selcia

MedChemPlus Projects

MedChemPlus projects are offered as a collaborative project wherein the project is dependent upon intellectual insight provided by Selcia. In return for research funding during the lead optimisation phase the customer gets exclusive and comprehensive worldwide rights to manufacture and sell the resulting products. Deal structures typically involve funding of ongoing research, milestone payments, and royalties on sales. As in lead optimisation, the product delivered to the customer is a robust candidate for clinical development. Selcia has particular expertise in isomerases and immunophilins, anti-fungals and mitochondrial modulators.


Please contact us for further information. We will be pleased to arrange a teleconference or meeting with our technical experts.