When, in April 1994, Plethora's Gregor Green and Professor Edward Carr from Woodstock University, UK, met at an official luncheon, hosted by Woodstock Innovation (a wholly owned company of Woodstock University created to fuse university-based research and business), Professor Carr suggested his company (Rummidgen) could provide Plethora with the combinatorial chemistry capabilities it had been looking for. Ensuing from that encounter, Carr hurriedly faxed a series of papers on combinatorial chemistry to Derek Lodge who, at the time, knew little about this pioneering technology. Having only recently been appointed as Managing Director of Rummidgen, Lodge briefed through the articles as best as he could, in preparation for a formal meeting with Plethora the following morning. That very next day the alliance was agreed in principle. Rummidgen was to become one of several collaborations pursued simultaneously by Plethora as part of a portfolio strategy code-named ‘PlethoraGen’, given that most were intended to capture advances in human genomics, and cell and molecular biology.

Signing of the formal agreement was delayed as Plethora awaited approval by its various internal committees, and due to the pharmaceutical's intentions to announce several alliances simultaneously. Whilst anticipating the formalization of the collaboration, Rummidgen recruited Jon Coe to head up a new laboratory, Oxygen, created as a joint endeavour between Plethora and Rummidgen to facilitate the development of specific solid phase combinatorial chemistry capabilities.