The company shared its take on the discovery services market with Outsourcing-pharma.com this week, after completing its move to a new HQ in Litlington, Cambridge.
CEO Rob Scoffin said: “With many drug discovery companies having restructured their R&D groups the ability for them to outsource library design, ligand based virtual screening and patent analysis is a vital element in their R&D pipelines, but accessed as a cost effective external resource.”
He said that this trend had prompted the move, explaining: “Moving to new offices will provide our staff with a new and exciting environment as well as placing us within the dynamic Cambridge cluster, which has become the major centre of the UK life sciences industry.”
Software update
Scoffin also revealed that Cresset plans to extend the capabilities of its current discovery software platforms later this year.
“In September we will launch a new feature to Torch and Forge which will help researchers optimize their leads by identifying the key 3D structural and electrostatic changes that impact molecular activity.”
The launch – further details of which were not provided – will follow just a few months after the firm released a graphics processing unit (GPU version of its ligand-based virtual screening software Blaze, which is designed to drug companies looking to increase their wet screening hit rates.
According to Scoffin GPUBlaze “runs at 40 times the speed of Blaze using affordable consumer hardware, making this effective lead generation tool accessible to any research lab.In addition to growing our pharmaceutical business we are also increasing our presence in the flavours and fragrances industry.