Drug Discovery CRO
Your next breakthrough
starts here
We partner with biotech and pharma teams to solve complex drug discovery challenges — combining deep scientific expertise in fragment-based and structure-based approaches to deliver validated hits and confident decisions.
About Us
Unravelling complex early drug discovery challenges
Vernalis is a drug discovery CRO that collaborates with a wide range of organisations to enable drug discovery programs through both short- and long-term projects.
By applying our expertise in structure-based drug discovery, we can engineer and express your proteins, validate hits and generate actionable data to evolve your chemical series into pre-clinical candidates.
Integrated Drug Discovery
Delivering validated hits and confidence in every decision
From fragment screening to pre-clinical readiness, our integrated pipeline combines deep structural biology, specialist screening technologies and medicinal chemistry to accelerate your programme.
Biology Foundations
Structure & Hit ID
DEL Services
Chemistry & Data
Preclinical Readiness
We collaborated with Vernalis on an integrated drug discovery project where they delivered remarkable results against an historically ‘undruggable’ target.
Pharmaceutical company,
Long term joint collaboration
Collaboration
Collaborating with a wide range of partners
Vernalis partners on the industry’s toughest therapeutic targets — working with companies like Servier, Pierre Fabre, Genentech and Lundbeck.
From DEL and fragment-based screening to full drug discovery programmes, we bring protein production, hit ID, lead optimisation, cellular biology and DMPK — flexing from long-term partnerships to focused, discrete projects.
Case Studies
Real science. Real impact.
Explore how our team overcomes challenges through case studies showcasing our success stories.
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Hsp90 oral backup pre-clinical candidate
Fragment-based and in silico hits were combined into a novel series of Hsp90 inhibitors, delivering tumour growth regression on oral dosing in a BT474 xenograft model.
Outcome Oral pre-clinical candidate — the follow-on to the intravenous phase II compound. -
DYRK1A and DYRK1B selective inhibitors
A Vernalis and Servier NMR fragment screen delivered two series of potent, selective DYRK1A inhibitors, including the brain-penetrant tool compound 34.
Outcome Two optimised inhibitor series and a selective, brain-penetrant tool compound.
Transform your drug discovery programme
We’d love to hear from you! Head to our contact page to get started.