De Novo Pharmaceuticals

De Novo Pharmaceuticals was a UK-based biotechnology company specializing in structure-based drug design and computational chemistry. Founded as a spin-out from the University of Cambridge in 2000, the company developed the proprietary Skelgen platform to design novel small molecule drug candidates from scratch based on protein target structures. The company's business model combined internal drug discovery programs with strategic collaborations with major pharmaceutical firms such as Roche and Pfizer. Their technology focused on generating novel chemical scaffolds for challenging targets like proteases and kinases. In 2004, De Novo Pharmaceuticals was acquired by the Swedish biotech company Medivir to enhance its drug design capabilities. The acquisition integrated De Novo's computational expertise into Medivir's antiviral and protease inhibitor pipeline.