Contact
  • Integrated Drug Discovery

    Integrated Drug Discovery

    Overview

    We deliver truly integrated drug discovery programs. Our co-located teams accelerate compounds from target ID to candidate.

  • Target Identification & Validation

    Target Identification & Validation

    It’s important to lay strong foundations for successful drug discovery at this first stage of the process. Our integrated target identification and validation platform combines AI with expert insights, and rigorous lab validation to guide targets through robust evaluation, ready for hit discovery.

  • Hit Identification

    Hit Identification

    Validated, high-quality hits, delivered through integrated technologies and expert collaboration, give you a confident starting point for faster drug discovery.

  • Hit-to-Lead

    Hit-to-Lead

    High-quality hits with early proof of concept are de-risked and profiled, ready to accelerate your program towards lead optimization.

  • Lead Optimization

    Lead Optimization

    Turning promising leads into clinical candidates with speed, precision, and the scientific expertise to generate high-quality data and deliver real patient impact.

Featured Resources

  • Modalities

    Modalities

    Overview

    Delivering integrated, modality-agnostic drug discovery to tackle complex biology, accelerate development, and advance innovative therapies with confidence.

  • Small Molecules

    Small Molecules

    Expert small molecule discovery from target ID to scale-up, delivering candidates designed for success and market impact.

  • Peptides

    Peptides

    Transforming complex peptide concepts into next-generation therapies through integrated design, advanced analytics, and collaborative end-to-end discovery expertise.

  • Targeted protein degradation

    Targeted protein degradation

    Leveraging induced proximity and CHARMED technology to rapidly design, test, and optimize degraders for previously ‘undruggable’ targets.

  • ADCs

    ADCs

    Advancing next-generation ADCs through payload-focused design, integrated expertise, and collaborative innovation to deliver safer, more selective therapies.

  • Biologics

    Biologics

    Driving biologics innovation through integrated design, structural biology, and multidisciplinary expertise to accelerate next-generation therapies from concept to clinic.

Featured Resources

  • Therapeutic Areas

    Therapeutic Areas

    Overview

    Combining deep therapeutic expertise with translational insight to design strategies, reduce risk, and accelerate discovery programs toward clinical success.

  • Oncology and Immuno-Oncology

    Oncology and Immuno-Oncology

    Accelerating oncology drug discovery through integrated expertise, innovative modalities, and translational insight to deliver candidates with real clinical impact.

  • Inflammation and Immunology

    Inflammation and Immunology

    Driving immunology and inflammation drug discovery through tailored assays, translational models, and integrated expertise for faster clinical success.

  • Neuroscience

    Neuroscience

    Advancing CNS drug discovery through integrated models, translational biomarkers, and multidisciplinary expertise to overcome complexity and accelerate therapeutic innovation.

  • Metabolic Diseases

    Metabolic Diseases

    Designing and advancing differentiated small-molecule therapies for obesity and diabetes through integrated expertise, mechanistic insight, and translational strategies.

Featured Resources

  • CellCentric Lead Optimisation Campaign - CCS1477

    CellCentric Lead Optimisation Campaign - CCS1477

    Inobrodib, an exciting, first-in-class oral anti-cancer drug in clinical development by CellCentric, was collaboratively designed, synthesised and supported on its pre-clinical journey by an integrated project team at Sygnature Discovery. Inobrodib is now showing promising results in Phase I and II trials for multiple myeloma and other cancer types.

    Case study
  • About Sygnature

    About Sygnature

    At Sygnature Discovery, we deliver world-leading drug discovery solutions to accelerate your compound from idea to clinic.

  • Meet our Team

    Meet our Team

    Our leadership team brings diverse experience and insight, driving collaboration and innovation across drug discovery.

  • Careers

    Careers

    Explore careers at Sygnature Discovery and join a global team committed to science, collaboration, and integrity.

Case Study

Sitryx: Empowering New Ideas

Many intriguing drug discovery programmes begin life at start-up biotech companies. Yet at the outset, these new organisations rarely have the resources or laboratory set-up immediately available to turn their ground-breaking ideas into a new medicine. This is where collaborations with expert CROs like Sygnature Discovery can accelerate a drug discovery project towards the clinic.

Oxford-based Sitryx is one such start-up, which signed an exclusive global licensing and research collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in March 2020.

An early collaboration with Sygnature played a key role in the company’s programmes reaching the point where big pharma took an interest. This is a great example of how an integrated drug discovery CRO like Sygnature can make a significant difference to drug discovery research, and ultimately to patients.

Sitryx currently have two compounds in Phase I clinical trials for inflammation and immunology therapeutic areas, SIT-011/SYX-5219 and SIT-042/SYX-1042.

A clinician assessing a patient, representing the inflammatory and immunology therapeutic areas targeted by Sitryx’s emerging medicines.

Customer Background

Sitryx is an Oxford-based biotech company founded by six world-leading researchers in the field of immunology and metabolism – Houman Ashrafian, Luke O’Neill, Jonathan Powell, Jeff Rathmell, Michael Rosenblum and Paul Peter Tak. The company’s focus is to develop new medicines in the emerging field of immunometabolism. The main concept is to identify novel disease-modifying therapeutics by manipulating the cellular metabolism of key immune cells. Essentially, the fine tuning of immune cells so they have beneficial, rather than harmful, effects in disease.

Prior to working with Sygnature, Sitryx had developed several insightful hypotheses based predominantly on data from their unique founder and academic network about biological targets that had potential – if modulated correctly by new drugs – to offer therapeutic benefit to patients suffering from inflammatory-based diseases.

Could Sygnature Discovery help them turn these world-leading ideas and leads into potential drugs? Working collaboratively, we were able to help review, validate and progress the most promising drug discovery projects from the scientific founders.

Why Sygnature Discovery?

As a start-up, Sitryx needed flexible experimental support, and Sygnature was able to undertake key experiments required to build these projects and help to validate these potential disease targets. We were particularly well placed to assist, with in-house experts in inflammation, metabolism and oncology, allied to a successful track record of success in delivering drug candidates, as well as ample cutting-edge lab facilities.

Sygnature’s Approach and Solutions

The Sitryx team worked in partnership with Sygnature’s scientists, using each other as sounding boards for ideas and data interpretation. Over the space of about 18 months, together we made significant progress in our understanding of the biological targets and discovered candidate-like molecules.

The team at Sygnature was able to start work rapidly as Sitryx continued to build their own laboratory capability in Oxford.

Importantly, as we offer such a broad portfolio of scientific capabilities, we were able to work flexibly with Sitryx, shifting resources from one discipline to another according to the requirements of each individual programme. Sygnature’s flexible business model proved instrumental to Sitryx.

“We are delighted to have played a pivotal role in Sitryx’s early progress,” says Dr Stuart Onions, CTO, Sygnature Discovery. “Our integrated drug discovery service and collaborative way of working was a key contribution to this success story. It is a great example of how choosing the right partners is crucial in turning world-leading academic research into investable prospects in a timely fashion.’

Key Results and Impact

In the space of about two years, Sitryx evolved from a start-up with an initial scientific concept to a business that was attractive to additional big pharma investment.

The licensing deal with Lilly gave Sitryx a $50m up-front payment alongside a $10 million equity investment, with further potential payments to be made if development milestones are met. Eli Lilly can develop and commercialise up to four novel immunometabolism targeted therapeutics – including the two lead projects that Sygnature helped support and progress. Sitryx is to continue its drug discovery activities, while Lilly will fund and manage any future clinical work.

Dr Neil Weir, CEO at Sitryx commented: “We chose Sygnature owing to their significant relevant drug discovery expertise, flexible business model and passion for the science they do. We are very pleased with project progress and the path we took to get to where we are. It really paid off.”

SYX-5219– for the treatment of atopic dermatitis

SYX-5219 offers first-in-class potential as an oral, disease-modifying anti-inflammatory therapy, targeting a critical enzyme that regulates cell metabolism called pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2). Modulation of PKM2 alters B and T lymphocyte function with the potential to normalise immune cell function and drive sustained disease remission in atopic dermatitis (eczema).

SYX-1042 is currently undergoing phase 1 clinical trials for autoimmune indications

Resources

Related Research & Resources

View all Articles