Studies of $b$-hadron decays to charming final states at LHCb

We present studies from the LHCb experiment of decays of the type H_b to H_c X, where H_b represents a beauty hadron (B+, B0 or Lambda_b) and H_c a charmed hadron (D0, D(*)+, Ds or Lambda_c). Such decays are important for the determination of the CKM angle gamma, a key goal of the LHCb physics programme. We exploit the data accumulated in 2010, and in the early months of the 2011 run. We report on the observation of new decay modes, and first measurements on the road to a precise determination of gamma.