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.
Biotech venture builder co-creating and scaling drug discovery companies
Molecule to Medicine (MTM) is a biotech venture builder that co-creates, builds, and scales drug discovery companies within a shared operational ecosystem, combining drug discovery expertise with shared infrastructure to enable rapid company formation. UK operations are based at Milton Park, Abingdon, with a further…
Solid form sciences and API development for drug candidates
Veranova's Cambridge site is a centre of excellence in solid form and particle engineering, operating under the Pharmorphix brand. The facility provides polymorph screening, salt selection, co-crystallisation, chiral separations, and process scale-up services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers. Part of…
AI-powered drug design engine built on AlphaFold technology
Isomorphic Labs is an artificial intelligence company applying frontier AI to drug discovery, built on and beyond the Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold protein structure prediction system developed at Google DeepMind. Its proprietary drug design engine spans target identification, molecular design, and binding prediction…
Gene therapy company targeting inherited and degenerative diseases
MeiraGTx is a vertically integrated, clinical-stage genetic medicines company developing AAV-based gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases, neurodegenerative conditions, and salivary gland disorders. The company operates end-to-end capabilities spanning viral vector design, GMP manufacturing, and clinical…
Fragment and structure-based drug discovery services
Vernalis (R&D) is a Cambridge-based contract drug discovery organisation specialising in fragment-based and structure-based drug discovery. The company integrates structural biology, biophysics, NMR spectroscopy, DNA-encoded library screening, medicinal chemistry, and computational approaches to identify and progress…
CASPAROV AI platform for targets in heterogeneous cancers
Enedra Therapeutics develops targeted cancer medicines designed to address genetic diversity within solid tumours, a major cause of treatment resistance. Its CASPAROV platform combines cancer genomics, AI and functional biology to identify survival mechanisms shared across heterogeneous tumour cells. These convergent…
G-quadruplex-targeting medicines for precision cancer treatment
Genome Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing cancer medicines that target G-quadruplex DNA structures associated with tumour biology. Its approach builds on research into non-canonical DNA folding and how these structures influence gene regulation and cancer cell vulnerabilities. The company develops…
Small molecule drugs targeting astrocytes in neurodegenerative disease
AstronauTx is a clinical-stage UK biotech developing oral small molecule therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. The company's approach targets astrocytes, brain support cells whose dysregulated inflammatory activity contributes to neurodegeneration, aiming to restore normal…
Structure-guided small-molecule therapeutics for antiviral and metabolic diseases
Halo Therapeutics is a University of Bristol spinout developing structure-guided small-molecule medicines for infectious and metabolic diseases. Its research combines cryo-electron microscopy, protein biophysics and computational chemistry to identify drug-binding pockets and design selective compounds. Its antiviral…
AI platform targeting chromosomal instability across cancer
Tailor Bio is a Cambridge-based biotechnology company developing an AI-driven precision medicine platform for cancers with chromosomal instability, a genomic phenomenon present in over 80% of all cancers. Founded from research originating at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, the company develops both…
Small molecule therapies for cystic fibrosis and COPD
Enterprise Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel muco-regulatory therapies for respiratory diseases. Its lead programme ETD001 is a first-in-class inhaled ENaC blocker designed to hydrate airway mucus and improve mucociliary clearance, currently in a Phase 2a trial in cystic…
E3 ligase inhibitors stabilising tumour suppressor proteins
Outrun Therapeutics is a preclinical drug discovery company developing small molecule inhibitors of E3 ligase enzymes to stabilise tumour suppressor and other disease-relevant proteins. Its proprietary platform has been used to profile over 45 E3 ligases across oncology, cardiovascular, neurological, and autoimmune…
RNA-based therapeutics targeting neurodegenerative disease mechanisms
Harness Therapeutics is a Cambridge-based biotech developing oligonucleotide therapeutics that exploit post-transcriptional regulation to achieve controlled upregulation of disease-relevant proteins in the CNS. Its lead programme targets FAN1 nuclease in Huntington's disease to limit somatic DNA repeat expansion, with…
Global pharmaceutical company developing medicines across major disease areas
AstraZeneca is a multinational biopharmaceutical company engaged in the research, development, manufacture, and commercialisation of prescription medicines. Its pipeline and product portfolio span oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, respiratory and immunology, rare diseases, and vaccines. The company…
Cancer immunotherapies targeting novel antigens from the dark genome
Enara Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing cancer immunotherapies directed against Dark Antigens, a class of cancer-specific targets derived from previously uncharted genomic dark matter. Its platform integrates bioinformatics, immunopeptidomics, and immunology to discover and validate novel…
AI platform for drug target safety assessment and toxicity prediction
SableBio is a software company providing an AI-driven target safety intelligence platform for drug discovery teams. The platform analyses large volumes of biomedical data, including unstructured scientific literature, to quantify and prioritise toxicology risks associated with drug targets earlier in the development…
Specialist CRO for drug and agrochemical metabolite synthesis and characterisation
Hypha Discovery is a specialist contract research organisation supporting pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies worldwide. The company produces and purifies drug and agrochemical metabolites using microbial biotransformation, recombinant enzyme systems and late-stage chemical synthesis, supporting metabolite…
DUB inhibitor therapeutics targeting mitophagy and degenerative disease
Mission Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing first-in-class small molecule inhibitors of deubiquitylating enzymes to treat diseases driven by mitochondrial dysfunction. By targeting a mitochondria-localised DUB, the company's drug candidates are designed to enhance mitophagy, the cellular…
Small molecule GPR65 inhibitors restoring immune response in solid tumours
Pathios Therapeutics is a clinical-stage drug discovery company developing small molecule inhibitors of GPR65, a pH-sensing G protein-coupled receptor that drives immunosuppressive polarisation of tumour-associated macrophages in the acidic tumour microenvironment. By blocking GPR65, Pathios aims to restore…
Precision oncology drugs and vaccines for cold tumours
IngenOx Therapeutics Limited is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing precision oncology drugs and cancer vaccines for difficult-to-treat tumours. The company serves oncology patients and clinical development partners through a pipeline spanning small molecule immunomodulators, PRMT5 inhibition and…