Privately owned contract research organisation (CRO) Selcia Ltd has opened a dedicated facility in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, responding to what the UK-based company says is an “ever-growing” US client base.

The new SelciaWest facility will initially focus on providing the company’s proprietary CEfrag fragment screening service to global pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients.

CEfrag uses capillary electrophoresis to detect weak binding interactions between fragments and therapeutic targets. According to Selcia, is an especially powerful tool for identifying hits on challenging biological targets, such as protein-protein interactions.

Setting up a dedicated base in the US market “is a demonstration of our commitment to provide our clients and collaborators in North America with the highest level of service and attention, combined with ‘best in class’ science, for which Selcia is globally recognised”, commented chief executive officer Simon Saxby.

Expansion plans

Last May, Simon Bury joined the company from Cyprotex Discovery as business development director of Selcia’s Discovery division, with a remit to lead expansion plans for the drug discovery offering.

The Discovery arm is one of two divisions at Selcia, which was founded in 2001 and operates out of 2,500sq m of laboratory space in Ongar, Essex. The other operating division is Selcia Radiolabelling, which specialises in carbon-14 radiosynthesis.

Selcia Discovery provides integrated drug discovery services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including in vitro biology, screening, fragment screening, medicinal, organic and analytical chemistry, in vitro ADME/PK (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion/pharmacokinetic) evaluation and in vivo pharmacokinetics.