NovAliX
Scientist
on
September 16, 2021
*This installment of Supplier Spotlight® is on NovAliX, a drug discovery-focused CRO that utilizes cutting-edge technology and innovative approaches to discover new medicines. *
What is your company’s mission?
NovAliX plays an active role in today’s research that will improve the health and well-being of tomorrow’s men and women. Working alongside some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, we provide state of the art drug discovery services to the pharma industry designing tailored-made solutions for each project contributing to the invention of new medicines.
What products and services do you offer?
As a drug discovery focused CRO, our services support the drug discovery process from screening to optimized leads. With a team of around 200 researchers, NovAliX has a unique biophysical platform operated by passionate expert scientists encompassing mass spectrometry, SPR, NMR, MST, DSF and HDX. Structural information can be offered by protein X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM — including membrane proteins. NovAliX offers strong capabilities in synthetic chemistry, custom synthesis, chemical process research and medicinal chemistry support. NovAliX also provides drug discovery services with computational & medicinal chemistry combined with screening platforms such as FBDD, covalent fragment screening and DEL.
What problems do you solve?
NovAliX chemists have an unrivalled track record in custom synthesis, medicinal chemistry support and chemical process research. We have made a significant number of challenging chemicals with more than 10,000 compounds supplied.
NovAliX has built one of the most comprehensive biophysics platforms to perform either binding studies or structural studies that allow us to solve complex protein structures. Thanks to our unique biophysics set up we can confidently characterize drug-target interactions by many different data parameters.
The combination of skills on biophysics, chemistry and chemoinformatics supports integrated drug discovery programs from target druggability to lead optimization.
What are the most innovative tools and technologies that you offer?
Flow chemistry is a powerful tool for process and discovery chemistry that enables hard-to-scale batch processes safely and economically. We also utilize an internal tool for AI-assisted retrosynthesis developed in partnership with Chemical-AI.
Cryo-EM has been developed over recent years as a complementary tool to protein X-ray crystallography to solve difficult protein structures such as multi-protein complexes, membrane proteins and antibodies. Our Cryo-EM laboratory is equipped with a Glacios microscope with a Falcon 3 detector, phase plate and microED module. MicroED is a cutting-edge technology analogous to single crystal X-ray diffraction allowing structure determination to form small molecules from nanocrystals contained in powders.
NovA-DEL is a fully integrated DNA-encoded library platform that represents a powerful and robust approach to hit identification and rapid lead generation.
What are your competitive advantages?
NovAliX boasts 20 years of operation and high scientific reputation and acknowledged quality of services with the added capacity to run drug discovery integrated projects supported by an award-winning drug expert team who created SirturoTM, BalversaTM and EdurantTM. Over the years, we have built an absolutely unique biophysical platform (Cryo-EM, MS, crystallography….). In 2018, we established a low-cost chemistry facility to the great delight of our clients. In 2020, a very rare comprehensive DEL platform started operations in our laboratories in Strasbourg.
Being right sized means large enough to deliver but not too large to stop caring. We retain firm control of the scientific quality of our work. Our scientists are excellent communicators with experts and generalists alike. These direct interactions are highly appreciated.
Who are your clients?
Big and small — pharma and biotech companies from all major developed countries.
What new products and services are you developing in 2021?
DEL, microED, membrane proteins and integrated medicinal chemistry driven drug discovery programs.
Where are your laboratories and offices located?
We are located in France and Tunisia.
How has Scientist.com helped your business?
The marketplace has helped in generating new opportunities and supporting our marketing initiatives.