NOSTRUM BIODISCOVERY SL

Their core work

Nostrum Biodiscovery is a Barcelona-based computational drug discovery SME that applies molecular simulation, high-performance computing, and bioinformatics to identify and optimize drug candidates. They contribute specialist expertise at the intersection of biomolecular research and digital infrastructure — working both on the computational pipelines that model drug-target interactions and on the data management frameworks that make multi-site research data findable and reusable. In the euCanSHare project they helped build a FAIR-compliant cardiovascular data platform spanning EU and Canadian research sites, while in BioExcel-2 they worked within Europe's centre of excellence for biomolecular simulation at exascale scale. Their commercial focus is translating computational biology methods into accelerated drug discovery workflows for pharmaceutical and biotech clients.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their earliest H2020 work (2018 start, euCanSHare), Nostrum focused on health data infrastructure — cardiovascular data catalogues, FAIR principles, cloud platforms, legal interoperability, and open science. The emphasis was on making heterogeneous clinical and omics data accessible and trustworthy across borders. Moving into 2019 (BioExcel-2), the focus shifted decisively toward computational biomolecular science — HPC, exascale simulation, drug discovery, and biotechnology — suggesting that data infrastructure was a means to an end, and the end is accelerating molecular research and drug pipelines. The trend points toward a company maturing from data-sharing enabler into a computationally intensive drug discovery specialist.

Nostrum is moving up the value chain — from enabling data access to performing the high-intensity computational work that data access makes possible, making them an increasingly attractive partner for pharmaceutical and biotech R&D programmes that need molecular simulation capacity.

How they like to work

Nostrum has participated exclusively as a consortium partner — never as project coordinator — across both H2020 projects, suggesting they operate as a specialist contributor that brings specific computational or data expertise rather than driving project management. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 31 unique partners across 14 countries, which reflects large, multi-partner consortia typical of Research and Innovation Actions. This pattern indicates comfort working within complex international collaborations but limited appetite or capacity for coordination overhead.

Nostrum has built a surprisingly wide network for a two-project SME — 31 unique partners across 14 countries — entirely through participation in large RIA consortia. Their network spans both the cardiovascular clinical data community (euCanSHare) and the computational biomolecular research community (BioExcel-2), giving them cross-community reach that is unusual for a company of their size.

What sets them apart

Nostrum sits at a rare intersection: a private SME with hands-on experience in both FAIR health data infrastructure and exascale HPC biomolecular simulation — two capabilities that most organisations treat as entirely separate disciplines. For a consortium building a computationally intensive drug discovery or precision medicine project, they offer the unusual ability to handle both the upstream data governance layer and the downstream simulation workload. As a Barcelona-based SME rather than a university or large pharma, they are likely more agile and commercially motivated than typical academic partners in the same space.

Highlights from their portfolio

• euCanSHare
  A transatlantic (EU-Canada) cardiovascular data infrastructure project running five years with the highest funding allocation for Nostrum, combining cloud, blockchain, omics, and FAIR principles at a scale rare for an SME participant.
• BioExcel-2
  Membership in BioExcel — Europe's flagship HPC centre of excellence for biomolecular research — signals recognised computational expertise and access to exascale simulation infrastructure and a high-profile pan-European network.