BioAscent expands into US Market

In order to support the growing demand for its integrated drug discovery services, BioAscent Discovery Limited has announced the appointment of Julian Abery as Director of Business Development, North America.

Mr Abery joins the BioAscent team as a consultant to drive the company’s continued growth into the expanding US market. Julian brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in the US-based pharma and biotech research market, having previously served in senior positions in both discovery services and instrumentation companies.

BioAscent offers a fully integrated range of drug discovery services, from biochemical and biophysical assay development and screening, to medicinal, synthetic and computational chemistry, as well as full compound management services and on-demand access to its Compound Cloud diversity library of 125k compounds. The company’s services reflect the strategic outlook of the industry, which continues to outsource more and more of its R&D.

With growing investment in US biotech, US-based companies are also finding it increasingly difficult to hire talent¹ – a further driver for the outsourcing of research. The UK has become a leading location for this outsourced research due to the quality of research, IP security, cost-effectiveness, and language.

Commenting on his appointment, Mr Abery said:

“While it can seem like a crowded field, what attracted me to the BioAscent role was the fact that it’s not just an integrated discovery services company, but the quality and credentials of the scientific team at BioAscent. In addition, almost uniquely BioAscent also offers compound management and on-site access to a large, diverse IP-free compound library as well, so even smaller biotechs can access ‘big pharma’ facilities easily and dependably.”

Paul Smith, BioAscent’s CEO, added:

“Over the last 12-18 months we’ve seen a growing number of enquiries for our services from US-based clients. While this follows the trend, what sets BioAscent apart is the percentage of enquiries that have become clients, which is significantly above the industry average. This ongoing period of really strong growth is based on our unique combination of scientific excellence, state-of-the-art facilities and range of services, and I’m really pleased to welcome Julian to the team to head up our US expansion.”

1. JLL Research Report: Life Sciences Outlook, US 2019.