Sygnature Chemical Services Announces Significant Increase in Medicinal Chemistry Team

Sygnature Chemical Services Ltd., gave an up-date on its recruitment activities. Due to an unprecedented demand for its services from clients in the USA and Europe, over the preceding six months Sygnature has recruited a further 15 experienced medicinal chemists, including significant numbers from AstraZeneca R&D Charnwood in Loughborough and Merck in Newhouse. Sygnature now employs 40 medicinal chemists in its modern, purpose-built facility in BioCity Nottingham.

Commenting on the success of the recent recruitment drive, Dr Simon Hirst, Sygnature’s CEO said, “We are delighted to have been able to attract a substantial number of graduate and PhD qualified medicinal chemists with between 8 - 22 years drug discovery experience in major pharmaceutical companies. AstraZeneca's research facility, located nearby in Loughborough, specializes in R&D for inflammatory respiratory diseases and is a major employer in the East Midlands region. The Merck site in Newhouse, Scotland, specialized in CNS disease R&D.

The expertise brought by the new chemists complements what we already had in-house and further strengthens our drug discovery know-how and expertise in asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, neurodegeneration, psychiatry and pain. I am confident that the addition to these experienced chemists will help fuel our continued growth through 2011 and beyond,” said Hirst.

Dr Prem Meghani who also recently joined Sygnature as a Scientific Group Leader from AstraZeneca commented, “I am pleased to be working at Sygnature with some of my former AZ colleagues. Sygnature is a dynamic working environment and it is great to be applying our combined drug discovery experience to clients’ discovery programmes. Sygnature is fast becoming a major player in medicinal chemistry-driven drug discovery. The addition of more scientists with big pharma experience to the Sygnature team broadens and expands our in-house drug discovery capability.”