The typical industry timeline from hit identification to preclinical candidate nomination is close to 3 years. As a fully integrated preclinical drug development CRO, ActcellLabs streamlines this process and can reduce timelines by a full year. By leveraging multidisciplinary teams with extensive industry experience, a focus on resource efficiency, and strong collaborative partnerships, we help accelerate progress toward the clinic.
Our scientists bring broad expertise across a wide range of therapeutic areas, acting as both technical experts and strategic consultants. They work closely with you to understand your target product profile and deliver candidates that align with your development goals.
Partnering with ActcellLabs provides access to a knowledge-driven, end-to-end development approach that supports programs from hit identification through lead optimization and into candidate selection. By combining advanced technologies with decades of experience, our teams consistently translate promising leads into viable development candidates. To date, we have delivered more than 100 candidates to our partners—and that number continues to grow.
At ActcellLabs, we provide end-to-end antibody discovery and development solutions designed to move your program efficiently toward the clinic. Using highly diverse scFv and VHH phage display libraries, we rapidly identify fully human, therapeutic-ready antibody hits against virtually any target—delivering royalty-free lead panels in as little as eight weeks.
Our integrated platform supports antibody engineering and optimization through humanization, affinity maturation, and liability reduction, with flexible reformatting into CAR-T, ADCs, bispecifics, nanobodies, and more. Candidates are advanced through comprehensive characterization, including biochemical interaction analysis, mechanism-of-action studies, and primary cell functional assays.
We ensure specificity through rigorous off-target screening and validation, supported by affinity measurements and bioinformatic analysis. In vivo studies—including PDX models, PK/PD, and early safety assessments—help confirm efficacy and guide development decisions.
For advanced programs, we offer custom development services, including CHO clone generation, manufacturability assessment, and material production to support candidate selection, toxicology studies, and GMP Phase 1 supply.
ActcellLabs provides fully integrated drug discovery solutions spanning hit identification through lead optimization, supported by expertise in synthetic and process chemistry, structural biology, assay development, screening, and comprehensive ADME and PK profiling.
Our capabilities include isotopic labeling to support metabolism and pharmacokinetic studies, alongside medicinal chemistry to design and optimize therapeutically relevant compounds based on structure–activity relationships. We also offer metabolite synthesis services to enable detailed characterization of drug metabolism and its impact on safety and efficacy.
Advanced computational approaches, including computer-aided drug design (CADD), are used to model molecular interactions and guide candidate optimization. These efforts are complemented by synthetic chemistry to generate novel compounds and analytical chemistry to ensure their identity, purity, and stability using techniques such as chromatography and mass spectrometry.
To support progression toward development, our process and scale-up chemistry capabilities enable efficient transition from laboratory synthesis to larger-scale production, ensuring robust, scalable, and reproducible manufacturing processes.
ActcellLabs supports pharmacology programs with integrated in vitro and in vivo models across a wide range of therapeutic areas. Combining deep expertise in disease biology, molecular modalities, and translational model systems, we help advance your understanding of novel therapies from early discovery through preclinical development.
Our capabilities span major disease areas, including cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, infectious diseases, inflammation and autoimmune conditions, musculoskeletal and orthopedic applications, neuroscience, ocular disease, oncology and immuno-oncology, rare diseases, and respiratory indications. Across these fields, we provide validated models and assays to evaluate efficacy, mechanism of action, and treatment response.
Using advanced technologies such as CRISPR, stem cell platforms, and patient-derived models, our teams generate clinically relevant data—even in complex or low-prevalence disease settings. From early screening to proof-of-concept and translational studies, we design and execute pharmacology programs that support confident decision-making and accelerate your path to the clinic.
RNA-based therapeutics offer powerful and versatile approaches to modulating gene expression, enabling targeted treatment of genetic disorders, cancers, and infectious diseases. Modalities such as antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), small interfering RNA (siRNA), messenger RNA (mRNA) therapies, and gene editing technologies like CRISPR allow precise control over biological pathways. By combining established RNA design principles with chemical optimization and advanced delivery systems, drug candidates can be rapidly developed and translated into clinical applications.
ASO therapeutics function by binding to specific RNA sequences to regulate gene expression through mechanisms such as gene silencing, splice modulation, or gene activation. siRNA therapies operate through the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, selectively degrading target mRNA to prevent protein production.
mRNA-based approaches extend beyond protein replacement to include applications such as CAR-T cell engineering, where mRNA enables transient expression of chimeric antigen receptors in immune cells for targeted cancer therapy. RNA vaccines similarly leverage mRNA to instruct cells to produce antigenic proteins, eliciting protective immune responses without the use of live or attenuated pathogens.
In addition, mRNA-encoded antibodies represent an emerging strategy in which therapeutic biologics are produced directly in vivo. This approach can reduce manufacturing complexity and accelerate timelines, with preclinical and early clinical data demonstrating rapid expression, sustained presence, and therapeutically relevant exposure levels.
Actcell Labs Inc
1361 Amsterdam Ave.,
Floor 3, New York,
NY 10027, USA
+1 888 4880155
support@actcelllabs.com