Drug discovery companies identify, validate and develop new therapeutic candidates for the prevention and treatment of disease. The sector combines biology, chemistry, data science and clinical expertise to bring new medicines from concept to clinic.
This category includes companies working on:
Browse 495 UK drug discovery companies below.
Preclinical small-molecule therapeutics targeting a novel pathway in chronic pain
Sevenless Therapeutics is a preclinical biotechnology company developing small-molecule medicines for people with chronic pain that responds poorly to existing treatments. The company has identified a new target in pain signalling using computational and mathematical modelling approaches and is designing small…
European hub for RNAi therapeutics developer
Alnylam UK is the European operational headquarters of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the pioneer of RNA interference therapeutics. Based in Maidenhead, the UK office serves as Alnylam's primary base for European commercial operations, medical affairs, and regulatory activities. Alnylam has six approved RNAi medicines on…
Bespoke bio-analysis and biomarker CRO services for drug discovery
Tetrad Discovery is a preclinical contract research organisation providing bespoke bio-analysis services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology sponsors. The company offers tailored pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analysis, biomarker screening across biological sample types, anti-drug antibody determination and…
3D-bioprinted patient-derived tumour models for oncology drug screening
Carcinotech is a contract research and tumour model manufacturing company that produces 3D-bioprinted micro-tumours for preclinical oncology drug screening and personalised medicine testing. Using patient-derived biopsies, primary cells, immune cells, and cancer stem cells, its platform generates assay-ready living…
AI platform integrating biology, chemistry and automation for drug discovery
Recursion is a clinical-stage biotechnology company using AI and robotic wet-lab automation to industrialise small molecule drug discovery. Its platform integrates phenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and patient data to identify and optimise drug candidates at scale. Following its acquisition of Oxford-based…
AI-driven combinatorial analytics platform for chronic disease biology
PrecisionLife is a computational biology company applying AI-driven combinatorial analytics to complex chronic diseases. Its platform identifies causal biological mechanisms and patient subgroups at a resolution not achievable by conventional genomic methods, enabling novel drug target discovery, patient…
Culturing microbial dark matter to discover novel antimicrobials and bioactives
Bactobio is a biotechnology company using synthetic biology, next-generation sequencing, and machine learning to culture the vast majority of environmental microbes that have previously been unculturable. Access to this largely unexplored bioresource enables systematic discovery of novel antimicrobial compounds and…
Native mass spectrometry platform for small molecule drug discovery
OMass Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing small molecule therapeutics against membrane proteins, GPCRs, and intracellular complexes that have historically been difficult to drug. Its proprietary platform combines native mass spectrometry, novel biochemistry, and custom chemistry to interrogate protein…
Clinical-stage oncology biopharma developing the bispecific antibody ivonescimab
Summit Therapeutics is a clinical-stage oncology company with UK research operations originating from VASTox, a University of Oxford spin-out. The company's lead candidate, ivonescimab, is a bispecific antibody targeting PD-1 and VEGF, in-licensed from Akeso and now in multiple global Phase III trials across non-small…
Immuno-oncology target discovery and antibody therapeutics developer
4C Biomed is a biotechnology company developing immuno-oncology therapies and target discovery platforms based on patient-derived tumour and immune cell systems. The company uses integrated screening technologies and clinical data to identify novel immune targets and develop antibody therapeutics designed to enhance…
Robotic laboratory workcells and automation integration for life sciences
Flexible Lab Solutions is a laboratory automation company designing and integrating robotic systems for life science research. Its modular workcells connect liquid handlers, microplate stores, imaging readers and other instruments for automated sample preparation, compound handling and high-throughput screening. The…
RNA immunotherapies targeting novel tumour-specific antigens
Epitopea is a biopharma company developing off-the-shelf RNA-based immunotherapies for hard-to-treat cancers. Using spatial immunopeptidomics, genomics, and systems bioinformatics, the company identifies aberrantly-expressed tumour-specific antigens that are broadly shared across patients with the same tumour type.…
Gene therapy biotech targeting neural circuit dysfunction
Sania Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing genetic medicines for diseases caused by dysfunctional neural circuits. Its approach combines precision AAV delivery to selected neural circuits with tuneable neuromodulation, using human iPSC-derived neural models to direct the evolution of human-centric…
Mechanobiology platform for target discovery and validation
Mechanome Bio is a Cambridge-based company developing a mechano-transcriptomics platform for biomarker and drug target discovery. The platform combines spatial multi-omics data from human tissue samples with mechanical tissue profiling and in silico tissue modelling to identify targets linked to changes in tissue…
Contract chemistry and manufacturing solutions for pharmaceutical and biotech research
Chemveda Life Sciences is a contract research and development organisation providing chemistry solutions to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agrochemical industries. The company offers discovery and medicinal chemistry, custom synthesis, route scouting and process research and development, alongside large scale,…
Approved presbyopia eye drops and investigational retinal therapies
Tenpoint Therapeutics is an ophthalmic biopharmaceutical company developing medicines and regenerative cell therapies for age-related vision disorders. Its dual-agent carbachol/brimonidine eye drops received US FDA approval for presbyopia in January 2026 and became commercially available in March. A UK regulatory…
Contract computational chemistry and molecular design services
CompChem Solutions is a Cambridge-based computational chemistry consultancy supporting pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic drug discovery programmes. Its services include molecular modelling, virtual screening, chemical library design, cheminformatics, property prediction and hit-to-lead optimisation. Founded…
Genome-editing platform mapping cancer drug resistance and druggable vulnerabilities
BASE Rx is a Wellcome Sanger Institute spin-out applying genome-editing and DNA sequencing technologies to cancer drug discovery. The company maps single-base genetic variants to identify druggable vulnerabilities in cancer genes and predict the DNA changes that drive resistance to cancer therapies. BASE Rx aims to…
AI drug discovery platform developing novel biologics for cancer and AMR
AMPLY Discovery is a biotechnology company developing an AI-driven drug discovery platform that combines machine learning, next-generation sequencing, and synthetic biology to identify novel biologic drug candidates from natural biological diversity. The platform digitises biological molecules, identifies treatment…
Small activating RNA therapeutics for gene upregulation and disease
MiNA Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering small activating RNA medicines, a class of oligonucleotide therapeutics that restore or boost expression of underactive genes by activating transcription rather than silencing it. The approach targets diseases driven by loss of normal gene…