Novalyst Discovery and AliX agree to merge

Following long-standing co-operation, Novalyst Discovery, a chemistry services company, and AliX, a structural biology company, have agreed to merge to create NovAliX, a multidisciplinary company providing flexible outsourcing solutions for drug discovery and development.

The combined company will be able to deliver comprehensive services from gene to preclinical drug candidates and offer alternative fragment-based drug discovery approaches.

Since the beginning of 2008, both companies have been combining operations to facilitate the organisational process.

NovAliX has developed a unique and innovative platform using non-covalent mass spectrometry for compound screening and binding characterisation. This mass spectrometry technology has emerged as an alternative and efficient technique for delivering high-content information on compound-protein interactions.

Using this sensitive technique known as FAMASS (Fragments Analysis by MAss Spectrometry) in combination with its in-house fragment library, NovAliX offers fragment-based drug discovery programmes - a cost-effective approach for fast lead generation.

"There was a natural synergy between the two companies, whose expertise in chemistry and structural biology brings a valuable set of skills for our drug discovery programme," said Stephan Jenn, president of both companies. "In the past, opportunities for joint programmes have shown us that we were able to integrate our highly complementary expertise to conduct projects successfully."

NovAliX has a team of 60 scientists and is located in 1,600m² state-of-the-art laboratory facilities in the Strasbourg-Illkirch science cluster.