Integrated Drug Discovery
Viva is dedicated to providing a broad range of high-quality pharmaceutical discovery and development capabilities and fully-integrated services from initial discoveries to investigational new drug applications for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Leading the multidisciplinary expertise of our scientific staffs is a team of experienced medicinal chemists and discovery biologists from top international pharmaceutical and biotech companies such as Pfizer, Merck, Albert labs in structure biology (Dr. Cheney Mao), cell biology (Dr. Derek Ren), medicinal chemistry (Dr. Zhixiong Ye), chemistry (Dr. Lei Fu), DMPK (Dr. Shawn Cheng), and in vivo pharmacology (Dr. Don Mu). We have strong project management and scientific expertise to handle drug discovery projects of any complexity in a range of therapeutic areas.
Our services include but are not limited to:
Target Validation:
Cell-based assays- Mechanism-based animal models
- Design and validation of biochemical and cellular screening
Lead Identification and Optimization:
- Screening hits-to-leads
- Fragment-based design
- Library design and parallel synthesis
- Structure activity relationship
- Computational chemistry modeling and structure-based design
Drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics:
- Bioavailability, DMPK, biodistribution
- Predictive ADMET assays
- Radio-labeled synthesis
Pharmacology, Efficacy, and Predictive ADMET:
- In vitro and in vivo efficacy
- Custom animal models
- Mechanism-of-action studies
We have the knowledge required to integrate all of these scientific functions into a team, and we are committed to helping our clients achieve their goals. Our operations in Shanghai contain modern and well-equipped facilities to offer fast, flexible, cost efficient, and client-oriented services.
Medicinal Chemistry:
Our medicinal chemistry department contains a high ratio of Ph.D chemists (over 30%) with national and international medicinal chemistry experience. The Medicinal Chemistry teams are led by Zhixiong Ye (VP of Discovery Chemistry), who has 14 years drug discovery and managerial experience in the pharmaceutical industry (Merck), and Dr Lei Fu (VP of Chemistry), who has 7 years of medicinal chemistry experience with in the pharmaceutical industry (Pharmacyclics) and is Adjunct Professor at the School of Pharmacy at Shanghai Jiaotong University.
We offer medicinal chemistry expertise in support of our clients’ drug discovery efforts of rapidly advancing hits into drug candidates in the areas of:
- Lead generation and optimization
- Design and synthesis of analogs to support structure-activity relationship studies
- Parallel synthesis of focused or fragment libraries
- Preparation of scaffolds and building blocks
- Computational chemistry modeling and structure-based design