Custom Synthesis Services
Custom synthesis services built for collaborative drug discovery and development
Our capabilities
Small Molecule Synthesis
Our small molecule chemistry team can deliver high-quality, custom small molecule synthesis solutions across all stages of drug discovery, from hit identification to lead optimisation and preclinical candidate support. With strong expertise in medicinal chemistry, scaffold designing, SAR development, and complex multi-step synthesis, we apply modern synthetic approaches and parallel chemistry to deliver diverse, property-optimised molecules.
Peptide Synthesis
We have a dedicated team of peptide chemists supported by the necessary infrastructure to deliver high-quality peptides efficiently. With experience across a wide range of peptide modifications, our experienced scientists work on both routine and challenging synthesis requirements. Our peptide synthesizer machines support peptide synthesis services ranging from parallel production of small quantities of multiple peptides to the scale-up of selected sequences, including those involving difficult modifications.
PROTAC Synthesis
In the last few years, we have developed strong expertise in PROTAC synthesis services and screening of complex PROTAC molecules, and related speciality chemistry. We provide comprehensive solutions for the synthesis of PROTAC building blocks, linkers, compound libraries, and related intermediates to help proof and de-risk your targeted protein degradation approach.
Lipid Molecules Synthesis
Our lipid chemistry team enables lipid molecule synthesis through the custom synthesis of complex lipids from milligram to multi-gram scale. We follow strict quality controls, including careful material selection and comprehensive characterisation, and supply final compounds with a Certificate of Analysis (COA). Our expertise covers complex long-chain, PEGylated, fluorescent, and ionic lipids for downstream research and formulation.
HTE & Library Synthesis
We have a dedicated team of scientists with extensive experience in High-Throughput Experimentation (HTE) & library synthesis across a wide range of chemistry modalities, including parallel reaction screening, synthesis, purification, and the efficient delivery of medium to large-scale library compounds.
ADC Linker & Payload Synthesis
Since the launch of this service in 2023, o2h Discovery has worked with many collaborators for the synthesis of novel ADC linkers and linker-payload combinations. We have a state-of-the-art dedicated facility for ADCs and toxin conjugation, co-located with analytical, bioassay and other associated capabilities
PR&D and Scale-up Synthesis
With over 20 years of experience working on fast-paced drug discovery projects with companies across the globe, we have prepared and scaled up thousands of new chemical entities ranging from multi-gram to kilogram scale. Our expert scientists and high-end infrastructure, backed by our insight-driven, multi-modality drug discovery platforms, offer high-quality, cost-effective PR&D and Scale-up synthesis services for your drug development projects.
Natural Products Synthesis
Our chemistry team has strong expertise in natural products and carbohydrate synthesis, including the isolation and derivatisation of natural products and carbohydrate-based molecules. These compounds often present unique synthetic challenges due to their structural complexity and high polarity. Our chemists bring strong problem-solving skills and hands-on experience in addressing these challenges, delivering high-quality, well-characterised compounds that can help progress complex novel drug discovery programmes.
Our team
Prashant Shah
CEO - o2h discovery and Co-Founder - o2h Group
Prashant's Biography
Prashant Shah
CEO - o2h discovery and Co-Founder - o2h Group
Prashant is a serial entrepreneur in life sciences and tech in which one of those companies was acquired by a public company. He is currently active in seed investing (a portfolio of ~50 companies), product/IP development, services, and building lab/office infrastructure. The early career was with the Strategy group at Accenture. He has a BEng, an MSc, in which he worked on the Human Genome Program at the Sanger Centre, and an MPhil in Management from the Judge Institute. Prashant is also a General Partner in the o2h SEIS/EIS Human Health Funds.
Sunil Shah
CEO - o2h Ventures and Co-Founder - o2h discovery
Sunil's Biography
Sunil Shah
CEO - o2h Ventures and Co-Founder - o2h discovery
A serial entrepreneur having begun a career in the Life Sciences team at PA Consulting group followed by co-founding two companies in the information technology and life sciences sector. The second of these companies, Oxygen Healthcare Ltd was acquired by Piramal Enterprises Ltd (BSE: PEL). Sunil co-founded o2h ventures which involves discovery services / collaborations, seeding drug discovery, academic in-licensing and biotechnology incubation. Sunil has a degree in Biochemistry and an MBA from Cambridge University.
Andy Morley
Chief Scientific Officer
Andy's Biography
Andy Morley
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Andy Morley brings over 25 years of leadership experience in global drug discovery, including senior roles at Sanofi and AstraZeneca. He has successfully delivered five clinical candidates, is an inventor on 55 patents and publications, and has extensive experience across all phases of drug discovery, from early-stage research through to candidate delivery.
Dr. Morley is also recognised for his contributions in structure-based drug design and for leading numerous multi-disciplinary collaboration projects.
Nilesh Dagia
Chief Special Projects Officer
Nilesh's Biography
Nilesh Dagia
Chief Special Projects Officer
Nilesh leads the global operations of o2h group covering a wide range of innovation led investment, life-science and technology businesses. He is also overseeing the development and execution of the new o2h discovery Shirish Research Centre in Ahmedabad, India. Prior to joining o2h group, Nilesh worked with Piramal Group in various capacities including as an Alliance Manager for a risk-share oncology-based collaboration with a US Big Pharma and has also worked as the Head of Biology in Piramal Discovery solutions. Nilesh obtained his Ph.D. from Ohio University and completed a post-doc in Immunology, Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the author and inventor of >30 life science patents and publications. He received the Young Scientist of India award from OPPI in 2010.
Catherine Stace (PhD MBA)
Vice President - Business Development (East Coast USA) & Strategic Relationships
Catherine's Biography
Catherine Stace (PhD MBA)
Vice President - Business Development (East Coast USA) & Strategic Relationships
Catherine holds over 18 years of post-doctoral experience in therapeutic discovery, with strategic roles in biotechnology, consultancy, and CRO organizations. She has contributed to small molecule therapeutics, peptides, health tech, and engineering. She started her career at Isogenica and Bicycle Therapeutics, establishing therapeutic platforms and discovery programs. She has also consulted for various biotech and health tech start-ups to develop platform technologies at the intersection of biology and engineering. Before joining o2h, she was EVP of Business Development at Domainex, collaborating with companies in the UK, USA, and Europe.
She has completed an MSc in Biochemistry from Nottingham, a PhD in Cell Biology from Cambridge, and an MBA from the Open University.
Tejas Upadhyay
Vice President - Business Development (USA)
Tejas's Biography
Tejas Upadhyay
Vice President - Business Development (USA)
Tejas holds a master’s degree from Gujarat University, earned his PhD in India, and gained valuable post-doctoral experience at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. His professional journey commenced at Alembic, and he has since contributed his expertise to several contract research organisations, including Evotec, o2h, and Piramal. Currently, he oversees all projects in the USA region. With a background in chemistry, he boasts over two decades of experience in the field of preclinical drug discovery.
Claudio Dagostin
Vice President - Business Development (UK & Europe)
Claudio's Biography
Claudio Dagostin
Vice President - Business Development (UK & Europe)
Claudio obtained his PhD in Chemistry (Mechanisms of Organic Reactions) from the University of Rome in 2000. He went for a post-doc at Imperial College London where he worked on Alzheimer’s disease chemical probes. In 2004, he started working in several companies in the Cambridge biotech cluster where he deepened his knowledge in Medicinal Chemistry and in Fragment Based Drug Design. In 2012, he went back to academia at Cambridge University where he investigated challenging drug targets such as protein-protein interactions. He also co-founded the Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge (EPOC) society in 2015 to support postdocs in their pursuit of entrepreneurial careers. In 2017, joined Capital Cell with a role in Business Development, then Abzena in Cambridge and finally o2h in January 2021.
Hemal Soni
Vice President - Chemistry
Hemal's Biography
Hemal Soni
Vice President - Chemistry
Hemal has comprehensive experience in leading & guiding multi-FTE synthetic chemistry research and development collaborations which are in support of the fast-paced drug discovery programs. At o2h discovery, he oversees the progress and troubleshooting of all the ongoing projects and helps with evaluation as well as kick start of new programs.
Hemal obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Kadi Sarva University, Gujarat. He has >17 years of industrial experience. Prior to joining o2h discovery, Hemal worked with Piramal Discovery Solutions (PDS) for 4 years during which he led the largest project covering 42 FTEs for a UK-based collaborator. He has worked with clients all around the world including UK, USA, Japan, Australia, Singapore and more.
What our clients say
Brian Dymock
Head of QEDDI
Our relationship with o2h over many years supporting our medicinal chemistry projects in QEDDI has been highly productive. With o2h’s help we have progressed our portfolio to an advanced stage ready for partnering. We are very pleased with the efficiency, productivity and communication with o2h chemists and look forward to further positive outcomes.
Julian Blagg
Executive Vice President, Drug Discovery
NeoPhore has worked closely with o2h for over 4 years, consistently supporting NeoPhore with small and medium scale synthesis and characterisation of novel small molecule therapeutics; work that has enabled significant Series A and Series B investment. NeoPhore highly values the synthetic expertise, efficiency, project management and clear communication at o2h. Importantly, o2h benefits from highly integrated analytical and compound purification groups to enable consistent and smooth delivery of high quality target compounds to tight deadlines. Furthermore, flexibility of resourcing at o2h is ideally suited to support an evolving small biotech company like NeoPhore.
Prof Kirill Alexandrov
CSIRO-QUT Synthetic Biology Alliance
We have worked with o2h team on a range of synthetic projects and had consistently positive experience. The combination of competence, effective project management and detailed documentation made us go back again and again. The company offers excellent value for money and makes a significant effort to work within the given funding envelope.
Bharat Majeti
Head of LNP Technology, RVAC Medicines
We understand that lipid chemistry is complex and requires significant expertise in synthesis, purification, and analysis. Therefore, we looked for a competent and reliable CRO partner to support our requirements and found o2h Discovery. We have done several projects with o2h.
FAQs
What are custom synthesis services?
Custom synthesis services involve the design and synthesis of bespoke chemical compounds tailored to specific research, discovery, or development requirements based on defined structures, specifications, and timelines. o2h discovery offers custom synthesis services across small molecules, peptides, lipids, and complex modalities, supported by over two decades of drug discovery expertise and scalable, quality-driven chemistry capabilities.
What are small molecule synthesis services?
Small molecule synthesis services refer to the design and chemical synthesis of low molecular weight organic compounds used in drug discovery and development. At o2h discovery, our small molecule synthesis capabilities span hit identification through lead optimisation and preclinical support, combining medicinal chemistry expertise, SAR driven design, and efficient multi step synthesis to deliver high quality, property optimised compounds on time and at scale.
What are peptide synthesis services?
Peptide synthesis services involve the chemical assembly of amino acids to create peptides used in biological research and drug discovery. At o2h discovery, our dedicated peptide chemistry team and advanced synthesizer infrastructure enable parallel synthesis, scale-up, and complex peptide modifications with a strong focus on quality and turnaround time.
What are HTE & library synthesis services?
HTE (High Throughput Experimentation) and library synthesis refer to the parallel screening and synthesis of multiple compounds to rapidly explore chemical space and accelerate drug discovery. Our experienced team of scientists at o2h discovery, support parallel reaction screening, synthesis, and purification across diverse chemistries to efficiently deliver medium to large compound libraries.
What are ADC linker payload synthesis services?
ADC linker payload refers to the chemical components of an antibody–drug conjugate that connect a cytotoxic drug to an antibody and enable its targeted delivery to cancer cells. At o2h discovery, we synthesise novel ADC linkers and linker–payload combinations using a dedicated ADC facility with integrated analytical and conjugation capabilities.
What are PROTAC synthesis services?
PROTAC synthesis services involve the design and synthesis of bifunctional molecules that enable targeted protein degradation by recruiting disease-relevant proteins to the cellular degradation machinery. At o2h discovery, we offer end-to-end PROTAC synthesis support, including building blocks, linkers, and compound libraries, to help validate and de-risk targeted protein degradation programmes.
What are PR&D and Scale-up synthesis services?
PR&D and Scale-up synthesis services focus on process research, development, and the efficient scaling of chemical compounds from laboratory to larger quantities for drug development. At o2h discovery, we leverage over 20 years of global drug discovery experience to deliver high quality scale-up synthesis from multi-gram to kilogram scale.
Why should I choose o2h discovery for my custom synthesis project?
o2h discovery brings over two decades of experience in advancing novel drug discovery programmes and delivering reliable custom synthesis services to partners worldwide. Our team of experienced scientists support the synthesis, optimisation, and screening of drug candidates across multiple therapeutic areas, including specialised modalities such as PROTACs, peptides, small molecules, and lipids, providing a comprehensive, end-to-end approach to diverse research needs.
Do you offer fee-for-service chemistry or FTE models?
Yes. At o2h discovery, we offer flexible engagement models to suit the needs of our partners. Clients can work with us on a fee-for-service basis for stand-alone chemistry projects, or choose an FTE (full-time equivalent) model for dedicated scientific support. We also provide integrated drug discovery collaborations, where our chemists and biologists work seamlessly with client teams as an extension of their R&D organisation.
Do you support clients globally or only in specific regions?
At o2h discovery, we partner with biotech and pharma companies worldwide. Our state-of-the-art laboratories in India, combined with our strong footprint in the Cambridge, UK biotech ecosystem, allow us to deliver world-class medicinal chemistry outsourcing solutions. We also work extensively with biotechs in the USA, making us a trusted CRO partner across major global innovation hubs.