Cortex Organics, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, is an organic chemistry company focussed on bringing the best synthetic chemistry services to support the pharmaceutical and life-sciences industries. The company offers high-quality custom synthesis and route scouting/development services and has a speciality in novel compound synthesis and difficult problem solving.
In addition to service work, Cortex is also developing its own stream-lined and contemporary synthetic processes towards valuable chemical compounds and natural products and seeks to commercialise these in the next couple years.
Darren Dixon – Copyright MKHO Photography
Co-founder and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, Darren Dixon spoke about the need for high-quality synthetic chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry. “Synthesis is and always will be the bottleneck in advancing projects across the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. With the constant demand for enhanced potency and selectivity in the lead compound classes across these sectors, comes incredible and ever increasing structural and stereochemical complexity within the various molecular targets. This is the synthesis challenge that the majority of existing CROs shy away from, or fail to deliver on, and the commercial opportunities for the high-quality problem-solving chemistry services are excellent.”
Shortly after its founding in late 2018, Cortex moved into the Agile Lab at Begbroke Science Park as one of the first companies to occupy the space. The company rapidly grew its business within the Agile Lab until they were able to move into their own laboratory in 2020.
CEO and co-founder Yao Shi, explained, “The Agile Lab was a perfect fit for a lean start-up company like Cortex. The fully functional laboratory enabled us to begin early-stage development work in the lab without any heavy investment. As one of the first companies to move in, the Agile Lab team worked closely with us to ensure the lab was fully functional for synthetic organic chemistry, including fitting a second fume hood, and obtaining all glassware and bench reagents. It is rare to find such a lab-share programme for synthetic chemistry and Cortex was able to benefit hugely.”
When asked to reflect on the journey so far and the future of Cortex, Yao Shi said, “It’s clear the Agile Lab scheme has enabled the success of our company from an early stage. We were able to create a stable and growing client-base whilst continuing with our own in-house development projects. We now have our own laboratory in the CIE with 4 fume hoods and will be looking to expand once again very soon. Cortex prides itself in putting excellent synthetic chemists and chemistry as standard and Begbroke Science Park is a great location with an excellent business environment for grow into. We enjoy working here and hope to be long term residents at the site.”
Yao Shi – Copyright MKHO Photography
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