CEO's end of year message 2019

2019 has been another successful year for Cresset with significant growth and developments in both software and services. I want to express my deep appreciation to the incredible Cresset team and to give thanks to our many loyal, dedicated customers who continue to support the company.

Cresset User Group Meeting

One of the highlights of my year is always the Cresset User Group Meeting (UGM), an opportunity to meet face to face with customers and collaborators from around the world. This year we again hosted an excellent group of scientists to share our latest scientific developments and our passion for computational chemistry. I again came away from the meeting challenged, invigorated, curious and energised by the great presentations and discussions.

Did you know that you don’t need to be a user of Cresset solutions to attend the meeting? I hope to meet new faces and old at the 2020 UGM on June 18th – 19th, 2020.

Growing team

Sadly, this year we’ve said goodbye to Dr Chris Earnshaw, Consultant for Cresset Discovery Services, who decided to retire after working with us for many years. His departure has been compensated by the arrival of new colleagues:

Based in UK

• Dr Stuart Firth-Clark, Senior Application Scientist
• Dr Nathan Kidley, Senior Application Scientist
• Dr Max Kuhn, KTP Associate and Application Scientist
• Dominika Nagy, Sales Administrator
• Iain Ronayne, IT Manager

Based in Japan

• Dr Ryuichiro Hara, Application Scientist

Based in US

• Dr Rachelle Bienstock, Senior Discovery Services Scientist
• Sheryl Thompson, Inside Sales North America

New product development

Free Energy Perturbation in Flare™ V3

The release of Flare V3 last month is a significant milestone in the maturation of the company and our product range, covering a wide spectrum of customer requirements in both ligand and structure-based design. This version of Flare brings to market an accessible-to-all implementation of free energy perturbation (FEP), the acknowledged best-in-class method for the prediction of binding energy in ligands.

I’d like to thank the entire Cresset team for an amazing effort in bringing this significant enhancement to market. Special plaudits go to the application science and development teams for their dedication during the release process.

PickR™ for selection of diverse R-groups for library design

In response to customer feedback and demand, earlier this year we launched PickR, a new solution that enables computational chemists to cluster and select reagents for inclusion in hit-finding and hit-to-lead libraries, generating better intellectual property. This command line application is powerful and easy to use and generates logical associations between molecules that fit well with the expectations of both medicinal and computational chemists.

Torx™ platform for web-based medicinal chemistry

We’ve also seen significant progress in the development of our web-based medicinal chemistry platform, Torx, in partnership with our strategic alliance partner Elixir Software. Torx will represent another step change in the capabilities that Cresset offers to medicinal chemists. An early access version will be available in the new year.

Consulting services projects and collaborations

The number of projects completed by Cresset Discovery Services continues to grow year on year. We’ve been working with a wide range of customers from academic groups to big pharma and everything in between. Throughout the year we have announced collaborations with the Medicines Discovery Catapult, Liverpool ChiroChem, PhoreMost and the Narayana Nethralaya Foundation.

Charitable giving and environmental responsibility

This time of year brings to mind the social responsibilities of the company. This year we have supported various charities and sponsored staff in fundraising, including Dominika Nagy running her first half marathon, as well as sponsorship of kits for Holmes Chapel RUFC and Cambourne U7s football team.

As a technology company we’re keenly aware of our carbon footprint and we are actively looking for ways to reduce it, such as fitting LED lighting, using timers to automatically turn lights off, removing single-use plastic from the workplace and using video conferencing to reduce travel. We plan to continue and increase these measures in 2020 , including working with the Woodland Trust to increase tree planting and conservation in the area around our Cambridge UK office.

I’d like to wish all our customers, partners and staff a peaceful and prosperous 2020. I look forward to meeting with many of you in the new year.