Sygnature Discovery is a leading provider of integrated drug discovery services. Founded in 2004 as Sygnature Chemical Services in BioCity Nottingham, Sygnature now employs over 200 people in its purpose built Discovery Building at BioCity Nottingham.
Overview
Sygnature helps its clients, located in the USA, UK and Europe, to develop the new medicines of tomorrow for diseases such as cancer, asthma, Alzheimers disease, serious bacterial infections, viruses etc. Most of Sygnatures scientists have PhDs and many have 10-22 years drug discovery experience with leading pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Merck. Hence, they are able to bring their considerable know-how and expertise to bear on a client's drug discovery project. Key areas of expertise include medicinal and synthetic chemistry, computer-based molecular modelling and bioscience. Sygnature Chemical Services was re-named Sygnature Discovery in September 2011.
Foundation
Sygnature was founded by Dr Simon Hirst, a medicinal chemist by training. Simon gained his degree and PhD at the University of Nottingham, before undertaking post-doctoral research at the University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, USA). His professional career was spent at AstraZeneca research and development Charnwood in Loughborough and OSI Pharmaceuticals in Birmingham and Oxford. However, being an ideas person, he felt constrained working for large pharmaceutical companies, so he decided to branch-out on his own and found a top class research services company 'Sygnature' in 2004.
Benefits of being based in Nottingham
Sygnature has been based in BioCity Nottingham since its foundation in 2004. BioCity provided a supportive environment to grow and the space for Sygnature to construct high quality laboratories to house its state of the art equipment. This set-up is hard to find outside of Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University have provided a pool of scientists to draw upon. Furthermore, Nottingham is a good place to live and offers a wide range of activities to Sygnatures employees.
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