Leading Structural Biology & Drug Discovery Outsourcing Services
SARomics Biostructures focuses on accelerating our clients’ drug discovery projects by applying structural biology methods. Our comprehensive integrated structural biology services support the entire drug development process, including contract protein crystallization & structure determination, fragment screening, hit identification, and structure-based lead generation and optimization.
SARomics Biostructures is a structural biology services company based in Lund, Sweden. Founded in 2006 by scientists with extensive academic and industrial experience, the company has rapidly gained recognition across North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Over the past twenty years, we have worked with most of the top ten pharmaceutical companies, many of the world’s most innovative biotech firms, and academic groups across a broad range of drug-target classes.
A video presentation by Björn Walse, CEO of SARomics Biostructures, provides additional details on the company’s services. See also our articles on the advantages of outsourcing early drug discovery services and why clients entrust our company with their drug discovery and structural biology projects.
Below is an overview of our integrated structural biology and drug discovery services.
Our laboratories and offices are situated at Medicon Village Science Park, near the MAX IV synchrotron laboratory, a fourth-generation synchrotron in Lund. By combining a high-intensity beam with advanced automation, the protein X-ray crystallography beamlines at MAX IV support crystallographic fragment screening, serial crystallography, and room-temperature X-ray crystallography. Additional information is available in our platform overview.
Protein Structure Services: Custom X-ray Crystallography & NMR Spectroscopy
Our state-of-the-art protein production and crystallization laboratories employ biophysical methods such as dynamic light scattering (DLS), differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF), and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) to characterize proteins before crystallization. To enhance the efficiency of our crystallization experiments, we employ high-throughput liquid-handling robotics and plate hotels maintained at different temperatures and monitored by an automated imaging system. Please review the protein crystallization project workflow details.
Two experimental stations at MAX IV leverage our X-ray crystallography protein structure services: BioMax and the newly opened MicroMax. Furthermore, the MicroMax beamline is particularly well-suited for serial X-ray crystallography experiments.
For details, please get in touch with us.
Drug Discovery Services: Fragment Screening and Structure-Based Lead Optimization
Biophysical techniques such as NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography are central to drug discovery. With their help, we can identify weak binders, characterize ligand-binding sites, and elucidate molecular interactions within ligand-protein complexes. Our proprietary fragment library, optimized for weak-affinity chromatography and NMR screening, includes about 1,300 low-molecular-weight (<220) MedChem-friendly compounds. These compounds are designed to cover diverse chemical space and are general-purpose. More than 90% of the compounds are commercially available, enabling rapid SAR generation.
For crystallographic fragment screening, we have designed a specific kinase-focused fragment library in collaboration with the FragMax platform staff. The FragMax facility was explicitly designed to facilitate crystallographic fragment screening projects. Our blog post on this subject discusses the advantages of crystallographic fragment screening and details the service.
Our clients are also welcome to send their own libraries for screening. Please get in touch with us to discuss the requirements.
We also invite you to explore our overview of strategies for structure-based drug design.
Recombinant Proteins For Drug Discovery
Highly purified, crystallization-grade proteins are essential for any structural biology, protein structure, or drug discovery project. Our comprehensive catalog features high-purity drug-target recombinant proteins expressed and purified to the highest standards in our protein lab. These proteins have undergone rigorous characterization using biophysical methods and other methods.
How Structural Biology Services Speed Up Early Drug Discovery
When no protein-ligand complex structures were available, medicinal chemistry teams ran trial-and-error synthesis cycles, made educated guesses about structure-activity relationships (SAR), and often needed dozens of analogs to find a productive direction. Structural biology has fundamentally changed the process by replacing guesswork with atomic-level data at every decision point. Three-dimensional protein structure has proven useful at every stage of drug discovery, including target identification and validation, early hit generation, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization. The difference between guessing and rationally deciding which direction to take can often be measured in weeks or months of time saved. A recent example is a collaborative project in which advanced structural biology support from MAX IV Laboratory and SARomics Biostructures enabled Acrivon Therapeutics to advance a novel cancer drug candidate from initial lead identification to clinical development in only 15 months.
For a pharma client, outsourcing structure determination and crystallographic fragment screening to a CRO with highly experienced staff and access to modern laboratories for protein expression, purification, crystallization, synchrotron data collection, and X-ray fragment screening facilities, with a typical project turnaround of 3 to 8 weeks, provides considerable advantages in project acceleration. However, we also need to remember that X-ray crystallography requires crystals, and not every target crystallizes easily. For large, flexible, or membrane-associated assemblies, cryo-EM becomes the better tool. For smaller proteins under roughly 50 kDa where solution-state dynamics matter, NMR may add information that crystallography cannot always deliver. As a structural biology CRO, we can match the technique to the biology rather than forcing the biology to fit one available method. We choose the technique that matches your target’s behavior and consider running more than one when the target requires it.
See the full article on our LinkedIn page.
Our Blog Explores Experimental Structural Biology & Drug Discovery Techniques and Applications
It also includes the latest company updates, highlights new publications, and features our team’s contributions.
3D Epitope Mapping Techniques
We discuss the advantages of 3D epitope mapping using X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy.
Crystallographic Fragment Screening
Overview of crystallographic fragment screening, the most effective method for screening fragment libraries.
Synchrotron radiation in drug discovery
We discuss a study conducted by the AstraZeneca team on the impact of synchrotron radiation on drug discovery.
Why Choose SARomics Biostructures for Your Structural Biology Project?
SARomics Biostructures’ mission is to accelerate clients’ drug discovery projects by providing top-quality structural biology services. We possess broad expertise in working with various drug target classes and have delivered hundreds of protein X-ray and NMR structures each year for different early-stage drug discovery projects. Since our founding in 2006, we have successfully solved thousands of protein structures and deposited over 500 structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Additionally, we have contributed to numerous publications in high-impact journals, including eight Nature articles and more than 10 papers in the highest-impact-factor journals.
To accelerate our clients’ discovery projects, we offer:
See also our blog posts on why clients entrust us with their drug discovery and structural biology projects and about the advantages of outsourcing early drug discovery to a CRO.
SARomics Biostructures laboratories and offices are located in the new modern laboratory building at Medicon Village, Lund. Medicon Village is Scandinavia’s largest research and development cluster of biotech companies, built to support innovation and collaborations in advanced research and business.