The opening of the new £58million Centre for Advanced Lead Discovery by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca at Alderley Park, Cheshire, marks a further stage in the company's continuing investment in world-leading research and development (R&D) facilities on a global basis.

The Centre will play a key role in the process of 'lead discovery' - the identification of compounds that can be optimised by chemical modification to create new Candidate Drugs (CDs) and ultimately new and better medicines. The scientific equipment installed will significantly increase the speed and scope of compound screening that can be carried out, as well as enabling highly-specialised structural biology, molecular enzymology, X-ray crystallography and computational chemistry to take place.

The new Centre will provide accommodation for some 150 scientists and support staff, whose work will greatly benefit from the leading edge hardware and software systems installed. They will play a global role in the storage and management of AstraZeneca's unique compound library and the distribution of compounds from this library to other high throughput screening (HTS) facilities in Sweden, North America and the UK.

The opening ceremony was performed on March 24 by AstraZeneca Chief Executive Sir Tom McKillop, who is also Chair of Northwest Science - England's first Science Council, established in 2001. Sir Tom said: "Discovering and developing innovative new products to help patients is the lifeblood of AstraZeneca and so it is vitally important that we provide our scientists with highly-competitive, specialised facilities. In creating this centre, we believe the Company is at the cutting edge of science for lead generation.  Capabilities in the new centre stretch from the robotic management of compounds to advanced computational approaches to designing lead drug candidates and incorporate one of the best microbial research facilities in the world. Within AstraZeneca’s strong global R&D infrastructure, this demonstrates our commitment to investment in the UK and our confidence in the continuing growth of its science base".  

Cancer research and enabling technologies are AstraZeneca's major growth areas at the Alderley Park site, together with research into cardiovascular disease (including diabetes and obesity) and inflammatory conditions such as arthritis. Completion of the new complex that forms the Centre for Advanced Lead Discovery forms part of a ten-year multi-million pound development plan for what is already the largest of AstraZeneca's eleven R&D facilities in the world.

AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world with healthcare sales of over $18.8 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, oncology, cardiovascular, neuroscience and respiratory products. The company currently employs 61,000 people, including 11,600 people at 11 R&D centres in seven countries - the UK, Sweden, the US, Canada, France, India and Japan.

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