Shares of Glasgow-based DeepMatter Group plc, the AIM-listed company focusing on digitizing chemistry,  rose as much as 7% on Friday after it announced it has doubled its customer numbers for its machine-learning “retrosynthesis” tool.

“DeepMatter … is pleased to announce it has secured contracts with five new major customers over the last two months for its powerful computer aided synthesis design tool, ICSYNTH,” said the Glasgow company.

“In total, ICSYNTH customer numbers have more than doubled through the course of 2020, and the company has achieved 100% customer renewals, adding to the group’s underlying revenue base.

“The new customers include some of the world’s leading multi-national pharmaceutical, agrisciences, biotech and contract research organisations (CROs). 

“Retrosynthesis is a growing area of the Life Sciences Research & Development space, providing an increasing opportunity for ICSYNTH.

“ICSYNTH is a powerful computer aided synthesis design tool that enables chemists to generate synthetic pathways for a target molecule, leading to better, faster and more cost-effective synthesis predictions. 

“ICSYNTH facilitates innovation by stimulating ideas for alternative or novel synthetic routes that otherwise may not be considered by the chemist.”

DeepMatter CEO Mark Warne said: “We are delighted to be supplying our powerful retrosynthesis and forward planning tools to these leaders in their field, expanding our customer base not only in the pharmaceutical industry but also within the agrisciences and CRO sectors.  

“With machine learning and cloud technologies both powerful tools in the race to accelerated drug discovery, we see a growing opportunity for both our ICSYNTH and DigitalGlassware platforms and  look to the future with confidence.”