SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Thermo Fisher Scientific has opened a new Cryo-Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) Drug Discovery Center in South San Francisco, providing pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with access to advanced imaging technologies aimed at accelerating drug development.
The facility offers hands-on access to cryo-electron microscopy systems and scientific expertise designed to help researchers generate detailed structural insights into biological molecules. The company said the center will allow drug developers to better understand disease mechanisms and speed the discovery of new therapies.
Cryo-electron microscopy has emerged as a powerful tool in structure-based drug discovery, enabling scientists to visualize complex biological structures at near-atomic resolution. Thermo Fisher said the technology can expand the range of therapeutic targets available for research and help pharmaceutical companies move potential medicines to clinical trials more quickly. According to the company, drugs developed using structure-guided approaches have more than twice the rate of clinical success while requiring roughly half the preclinical development time and cost compared with industry averages.
“At Thermo Fisher, so much of what we do is grounded in helping our customers perform research that brings life-saving medicines to patients faster and more effectively,” said Glyn Davies, president of Materials & Structural Analysis. “The opening of our Cryo-EM Drug Discovery Center creates a collaborative environment where scientists can directly harness the power of Cryo-EM to better understand disease at the molecular level and accelerate therapeutic development.”
The new center, located in the Oyster Point biotechnology hub of South San Francisco, builds on Thermo Fisher’s earlier collaboration with the UK Pharmaceutical Cryo-EM Consortium, which was established in Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 2016. The consortium, now marking its 10-year anniversary, was created through a partnership between Thermo Fisher Scientific and five pharmaceutical companies to advance the use of cryo-EM in drug discovery.
Modeled on that collaborative framework, the South San Francisco facility will include founding customer members and is intended to expand similar partnerships across the North American biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors.
Thermo Fisher said the center combines advanced cryo-EM instrumentation with a collaborative scientific environment designed to help researchers move discoveries more efficiently from early research to drug development. Industry partners and customers are expected to participate in the launch, reflecting growing interest in structure-based drug discovery technologies.
