UK Pharmacology CRO
Drug Discovery Services For US Clients
Advance your preclinical drug discovery programs with Excellerate Bioscience, specialists in molecular and cellular pharmacology.
- Studies typically start within 2–4 weeks of proposal
- Time-zone overlap means results are often waiting before your workday begins
- Your IP stays yours — standard CDAs and MSAs, encrypted data transfer
- 50+
- Drug Discovery Clients
- 150+
- Drug Discovery Projects
- 40+
- Years of Drug Discovery Pharmacology
Talk to a scientist about your program
Speak with our scientific team to discuss your programme, explore initial ideas and develop an experimental strategy, with no obligation.
Accreditations & marketplace listings
What Happens After You Get In Touch
Three simple steps, direct to the science.
Our Scientists Read It
Your enquiry goes directly to our senior scientific team, not a sales queue. You’ll receive initial thoughts on the receptor biology and potential assay approaches.
Your Initial Discussion
We work through your objectives, timelines and deliverables based on your request, then develop an initial project proposal for you to take to your team.
Project Initiation
Once the project scope is agreed, projects typically initiate within two to four weeks, with regular communication throughout to keep you informed of progress.
“Excellerate scientists have become integral members of the wider project team, developing and running primary assays to an exceptionally high quality and providing their broader input across the project.”
Henry Danahay
Head of Biology, Enterprise Therapeutics
“As Enterprise Therapeutics, we have worked with Excellerate Bioscience since 2016. The team have enormous experience and have supported two of our drug discovery programs using a range of in vitro assays.
Most recently Excellerate scientists have become integral members of the wider project team, developing and running primary assays to an exceptionally high quality and providing their broader input across the project. The team are a pleasure to work with, communicating openly and showing great flexibility and proactivity to meet the needs of the project.”
Drug Discovery
Screening & Assay Services
Excellerate Bioscience provides high-quality in vitro pharmacology and drug discovery services to support preclinical research.
Based in Nottingham, UK, we partner with US biotech and pharmaceutical companies to deliver targeted assay development, robust pharmacological analysis, and collaborative scientific input across a range of therapeutic areas.
As a UK-based contract research organization (CRO), we offer streamlined study design, fast onboarding, and clear, decision-ready data aligned to your research goals. From proof-of-concept and mechanism-of-action studies to longer-term screening programs, we help US discovery teams move efficiently from idea to results.
For US clients, partnering with a UK CRO provides a practical advantage. Overlapping working hours across East and West Coast time zones allow studies to progress around the clock, with results often available before the US workday begins. Across multiple US biotech and pharmaceutical programs, we have delivered actionable data that supports faster timelines and more confident decision-making.
Discuss Your ProgramScientific Capabilities Across Drug Discovery
Drug Discovery Phases
Target validation, hit identification, lead optimization, and preclinical decision support across early drug discovery.
Screening and Assay Development
Custom in vitro assay development and screening strategies optimized for robustness, reproducibility, and biological relevance.
Phenotypic and Functional Assays
Broad phenotypic and pathway-specific assays capturing functional cellular responses beyond target engagement alone.
Therapeutic Areas
Expertise across respiratory disease, immunology and inflammation, metabolic diseases, oncology, and CNS.
Targets, Modalities, and Molecular Pharmacology
GPCRs, kinases, enzymes, protein–protein interactions, and signaling pathways evaluated across small molecules, biologics, peptides, and emerging modalities using quantitative, functional, and kinetic pharmacology.
Data-Ready Assays
Assays designed with reproducibility, structure, and metadata in mind to support downstream analytics, modeling, and AI-driven discovery.
Why US Clients Choose Excellerate
Operational Reliability
We operate established processes for US-based clients, including international sample shipping and logistics, clear project scoping, and responsive communication. We use defined project workflows with regular check-ins, interim updates, and clear deliverables to support progression through to data delivery. Projects typically initiate within 2-4 weeks of proposal.
IP Security and Governance
All intellectual property remains with the client. We work under international standard CDAs and MSAs, with flexible contracting frameworks to align with your organizational legal and compliance requirements. Data are managed under strict confidentiality, using secure storage and encrypted data transfer as standard.
UK Scientific Expertise and Accountability
Our scientists bring deep expertise in pharmacology, cell biology, and assay development, supporting US discovery programs that require scientific ownership, reproducibility, and clear interpretation of complex data. We take accountability for study design, data quality, and scientific rationale, ensuring results, including structured datasets and metadata, are suitable for confident decision-making and downstream data-driven or AI-enabled analysis.
Scientific Leadership You Can Trust
Choosing Excellerate Bioscience means working with scientists who bring deep drug discovery experience and a clear understanding of how data informs decisions. Our leadership team combines academic rigor with industry perspective, ensuring studies are designed not just to generate data, but to answer the right scientific questions.
With specialist expertise in GPCR biology, cell-based pharmacology, and discovery screening, we work closely with US partners as an extension of their research teams. This collaborative approach adds scientific insight, helping programs progress efficiently while maintaining high standards of data quality, reproducibility, and interpretation.
Our focus is on delivering robust, decision-ready data that supports earlier and more confident go/no-go decisions, reducing risk and accelerating progression through the discovery pipeline.
Nick Holliday
Chief Scientific Officer
Nick has over 25 years’ experience in the molecular pharmacology of GPCRs and other drug targets, and in leading development of biochemical and cellular assay systems for analytical pharmacology and compound profiling.
Viral Patel
Chief Operations Officer
Viral has over 20 years of global pharmaceutical research experience contributing to the development of therapeutics in a variety of disease areas. He has successfully built pharmacology and enzymology groups within Novartis and Merck, with extensive experience in developing automated screening cascades.
Benjamin Moore
Associate Director
Ben has prior drug discovery research experience in large pharma and has a leading role in scientific operations at Excellerate, setting up external collaborations to facilitate our capabilities within in vitro compound profiling and leading a number of late-stage mechanism-of-action projects.
150+
Studies Completed
50+
Client Programs Advanced
Explore Our Scientific Resources
The Excellerate team has made significant contributions to preclinical pharmacology.
Here you can access useful resources from the team, as well as publications, presentations and other pharmacology blogs.
Publications
Unravelling intrinsic efficacy and ligand bias at G protein coupled receptors: A practical guide to assessing functional data; 2016
Discovery, Characterization, and Structure-Based Optimization of Small-Molecule in Vitro and in Vivo Probes for Human DNA Polymerase Theta; 2022
High-throughput kinetics in drug discovery; 2024
Design, Synthesis, and Application of Fluorescent Ligands Targeting the Intracellular Allosteric Binding Site of the CXC Chemokine Receptor 2; 2023
GRK-biased adrenergic agonists for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity; 2025
Phenotypic pharmacology of novel Complex I inhibitors eliciting tissue repair concurrent to control of inflammation; 2025
An industrial perspective on ligand bias in GPCR drug discovery; 2025
Micro-pharmacokinetics: Qualifying local drug concentration at live cell membranes; 2018
Airway remodeling disease: primary human structural cells and phenotypic and pathway assays to identify targets with potential to prevent or reverse remodeling; 2018
Extrapyramidal side effects of antipsychotics are linked to their association kinetics at dopamine D2 receptors; 2017
GPCRs – Structure, Function and Drug Discovery; 2019
Frequently Asked Questions
Get answers to common questions about our services and processes
Ready to discuss your discovery program?
Speak with our scientific team about your objectives, timelines, and how we can support your research.
Talk to a scientist about your program
Speak with our scientific team to discuss your programme, explore initial ideas and develop an experimental strategy, with no obligation.
Have a target you need profiled? Studies typically start within 2–4 weeks.
Talk To A Scientist