Eurofins Scientific, a world leader in providing analytical support to the global pharmaceutical industry, has signed an agreement to acquire DiscoverX, a leader in drug discovery products and services across all stages of discovery from target identification and lead discovery to preclinical and beyond. The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks, upon fulfillment of customary closing conditions.

DiscoverX is an innovative company that develops, manufactures, and commercializes reagents, complete cell-based assay kits, profiling and screening services as well as other disruptive solutions for the drug discovery, screening, and life science markets.

The company has over 15 years’ experience in drug discovery and development leveraging on the Enzyme Fragment Complementation (EFC) technology and has become a reputable market leader in GPCR screening applications. EFC technology is a proven, established screening platform in most major pharmaceutical companies.

The combination of Eurofins Pharma Discovery Services and DiscoverX provides the pharmaceutical and biotech industries with a partner of choice for end-to-end drug discovery services, enabling customers to improve research productivity and effectiveness of their screening, lead optimization and structure-activity relationships (SAR) campaigns, thus accelerating the discovery and development of new drugs.

In addition, DiscoverX’s KINOMEscan platform and epigenetics services, combined with Eurofins Pharma Discovery’s kinase profiling services would result in the largest available portfolio of kinase products and services in the market.

Furthermore, it provides researchers with a comprehensive technology platform for assessment of drugs to kinases, the most widely evaluated drug target.

DiscoverX’s expertise complements Eurofins discovery pharmacology capabilities following the previous acquisitions of Panlabs, Cerep, EMD Millipore Discovery and Development Solutions and Villapharma.

The company is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing R&D outsourcing market in the USA and provides a gateway to the Asia-Pacific region.