Synovo GmbH

Synovo is a Tübingen based drug discovery services company with a focus on inflammation and innate immunity. Regulation of innate immunity is fundamental to avoiding infections but it is also now recognised as being a driver behind diseases as diverse as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. This provides Synovo with a broad set of applications for its know-how.

Synovo is self-sustaining through its service business and it has always run profitably. The core of the services offering are pharmacological studies which it conducts mainly for biotech and mid-size companies. In addition, support functions like formulation chemistry and analytics enable more complex development studies.

In parallel, Synovo uses its skills and facilities to conduct innovative research in collaboration with partners throughout the world. This has resulted in various drug candidates being developed for immune-oncology applications and more recently, inflammatory bowel disease and infection.

Another success story is its contribution to a new point of care diagnostic for wounds. The device developed in collaboration with the Synovo chemistry team detects infections before they are apparent to the naked eye and thus allows early treatment. The device was short-listed for the European Horizon Prize for ways to spare the use of antibiotics and has been licensed to a global partner and is likely to enter the European market later this year.