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.
Transcription factor-targeting drug discovery for neurodegeneration
Scripta Therapeutics is an Oxford-based biotech company developing disease-modifying therapeutics by mapping and modulating transcription factor networks. Its platform integrates AI, imaging, and patient-derived models in a lab-in-the-loop workflow to identify compounds that restore healthy cellular states. The…
Contract development and manufacturing of complex small molecule APIs and ADCs
Sterling Pharma Solutions is a contract development and manufacturing organisation specialising in complex small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredient development and cGMP manufacturing for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Capabilities include hazardous and high-potency chemistry, flow chemistry,…
Dark genome platform identifying first-in-class targets for autoimmune disease
Nucleome Therapeutics is a drug discovery company using 3D genome mapping to identify therapeutic targets encoded in the non-coding regions of the human genome. Its platform integrates high-resolution chromatin conformation data with functional genomics and machine learning to link disease-associated genetic variants…
Oncology biotech creation studio developing and spinning out cancer therapies
Cumulus Oncology is a company creation studio specialising in oncology drug discovery and development. The company identifies and sources novel cancer therapeutic assets from academic and commercial organisations, funds them, and incorporates them into newly created spin-out biotechs. Cumulus provides scientific…
Antibody immunotherapy targeting toxic tau for neurodegenerative disease
TauC3 Biologics is a preclinical biopharmaceutical company developing an antibody-based immunotherapy that targets tauC3, a toxic, truncated form of the tau protein implicated in neurodegenerative disease. Its lead candidate, TBL-100, is a humanized monoclonal antibody developed with LifeArc, designed to selectively…
Infant gut bacteria-derived therapeutic compounds
Bioscopic is a UK biotech developing therapeutic compounds derived from infant gut bacteria to treat cancer and chronic disease. It holds what it describes as the world's largest collection of infant gut bacterial strains, which it uses as a screening platform to identify biologically active compounds. Its lead…
AI operating system connecting pharma drug development decisions end-to-end
Perceptic is a UK software company that has built an AI platform connecting decision-making across the drug development lifecycle. Its system unifies external asset scouting, scientific evaluation of licensing candidates, indication selection for clinical trials, and clinical data analysis within a single, traceable…
Clinical-stage company developing treatments for cancer cachexia and muscle wasting
Actimed Therapeutics is a clinical-stage specialty pharma developing treatments for cancer cachexia and muscle wasting disorders, areas with significant unmet need and no globally approved therapies. Its lead programme has completed Phase 1 and received FDA IND approval, with a Phase 2b/3 trial planned in non-small…
Finnish pharma company marketing and developing medicines
Orion Pharma (UK) Limited is the UK subsidiary of Orion Corporation, a Finnish pharmaceutical company. The UK entity manages commercial operations for Orion's prescription medicines portfolio across therapy areas including neurology, respiratory disease, oncology and women's health. A biologics R&D centre opened at…
AI knowledge graph platform curating biomedical literature for drug discovery
Biorelate is a software company providing AI-driven biomedical data curation to the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. Its platform applies natural language processing and machine learning to extract structured cause-and-effect relationships from over 30 million scientific text sources, generating knowledge…
Inhaled lentiviral gene therapies for rare respiratory diseases
AlveoGene is a biotechnology company developing inhaled gene therapies for rare respiratory disorders. It uses a lentiviral vector platform engineered to deliver therapeutic genes efficiently to the cells lining the airways and lungs. Its lead programme targets alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, an inherited condition…
Academic-industry translational research institute
The Milner Therapeutics Institute is a University of Cambridge biomedical research institute established to bridge academic science and pharmaceutical drug discovery. Founded in 2015 and based at the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, it operates both an in-house research programme and…
Cancer biotherapeutics targeting disease-specific protein isoforms
Isoform Oncology is an early-stage biotechnology company developing cancer therapeutics based on isoform switching and alternative RNA splicing. The company identifies cancer-specific protein variants arising from aberrant splicing and develops biotherapeutics designed to selectively target these disease-specific…
Next-generation ADC linker chemistry for precision cancer therapeutics
Siftr Bio is a biotechnology company developing novel linker chemistry for antibody-drug conjugates. Current ADC linkers have limited diversity and insufficient selectivity, contributing to off-target toxicity that restricts their therapeutic application. Siftr's platform screens enzyme-responsive linker candidates…
Humanised transgenic mouse models for preclinical drug metabolism research
PhaSER Biomedical is a reagents and research tools company commercialising a transgenic mouse model for drug discovery and development applications. The mouse model is extensively humanised for drug-metabolising cytochrome P450 enzymes, enabling human-relevant predictions of drug efficacy, metabolite profiles,…