Ansaris, a structure-based drug discovery company and division of Locus Pharmaceuticals, has elected Christopher Cashman to its board of directors. He was previously CEO of Protez Pharmaceuticals and Message Pharmaceuticals and global director of business and new development for Pfizer. Mr Cashman is also on the boards of JDP Therapeutics, Noble Biomaterials and MBF Therapeutics.

Dr William Moore has joined Viamet Pharmaceuticals, a US company developing metalloenzyme inhibitors, as chief scientific officer. Dr Moore has 21 years' R&D experience, primarily in early-stage companies. He was formerly chief scientific officer and vice-president of R&D at Locus Pharmaceuticals. Before that, he worked at Axys Pharmaceuticals as vice-president of target discovery and validation.

BioLeap LLC hopes to be part of the solution to Big Pharma's pipeline problem. Its computational technology for identifying and optimizing lead compounds focuses on the free energy of binding, which represents an enormous computational problem. But the developers of BioLeap's technology have created an industrial process that makes such calculations feasible in a reasonably fast time frame.

Silicos NV's computational lead identification and development platform combines proprietary and commercial computational chemistry tools, and has potential in many indications such as cancer and infectious diseases, central nervous system disorders, and immunodeficiency diseases. The company is using its virtual fragment-based tools to create small molecules for both clients and for its own internal projects.