OMass Therapeutics Announces New Phase of Growth with Move to New Facilities and Team Expansion to Support Portfolio Progress

PRESS RELEASE

OMass Therapeutics Announces New Phase of Growth with Move to New Facilities and Team Expansion to Support Portfolio Progress

• Move to new purpose-built 16,000ft² flagship site on ARC Oxford campus to support continued company growth
• Expansion of senior leadership team with the appointment of Winfried Barchet Ph.D. as Vice President of Immunology

Oxford, United Kingdom – 19 April 2023 – OMass Therapeutics (‘OMass’, or ‘the Company’), a biotechnology company that identifies medicines against highly validated target ecosystems, today announces the next phase of its growth towards becoming a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company. This includes a move to purpose-designed R&D and office facilities, and expansion of its senior leadership team with the appointment of Winfried Barchet Ph.D. as its Vice President of Immunology.

OMass has expanded over the past 12 months, with a total headcount of 55 employees. The new flagship site offers 16,000ft² of mixed-use space and will enable co-location and enhanced collaboration of discovery research teams from OMass’ former sites in Oxford and Nottingham. The laboratory space has been refurbished by ARC to meet OMass’ scientific and technical requirements, including air handling for mass spectrometry and cell culture, and new facilities for chemistry and structural biology to support ongoing and future drug discovery efforts. Office space has also been designed to better enable collaborative working both on-site and virtually.

David Williams, Director of Leasing at ARC said: “We’re delighted to be supporting OMass Therapeutics on its growth journey. It’s a leading UK biopharma company at the forefront of innovation in drug discovery. The new building keeps it at the heart of a vibrant ecosystem of innovative companies in Oxford and offers access to communal, social and co-working spaces and a curated programme of events for campus members.”

The Company also continues to expand its senior leadership team and enhance depth of immunology expertise with the recent appointment of Winfried Barchet Ph.D. as its Vice President of Immunology. Winfried brings more than 15 years of project and team leadership experience spanning discovery, translational research and drug discovery in both academia and industry. He joins from IFM Therapeutics where he was the Executive Director of Innate Immunity focusing on drugging targets in the inflammasome and the nucleic acid sensing pathways. Prior to that, he worked at Roche as a discovery area leader in innate immunity and in academia at the University of Bonn where he was the Professor of Translational Immunology at the German Centre for Infection Research.

Ros Deegan, CEO of OMass said: “It is an exciting period of growth for OMass Therapeutics as we move to our new premises, bringing all our staff under one roof, and welcome Winfried to the senior leadership team. Winfried brings a wealth of expertise in immunology as we continue to execute on our plans to discover drugs for previously undruggable targets, and ultimately, bring life changing medicines to patients.”

Caption: Winfried Barchet Ph.D., Vice President of Immunology, OMass Therapeutics
Copyright: OMass Therapeutics

Caption: OMass new R&D and office facilities on the ARC Oxford campus
Copyright: ARC Group

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About OMass Therapeutics

OMass Therapeutics is a biotechnology company discovering medicines against highly-validated target ecosystems, such as membrane proteins or intracellular complexes. The company’s unique OdyssION™ technology platform comprises novel biochemistry techniques, next-generation native mass spectrometry, and custom chemistry. This allows OMass to interrogate not just the target, but also the interaction of the target with its native ecosystem, separate from the confounding complexity of the cell. The result is cell-system fidelity with cell-free precision. OMass is advancing a pipeline of small molecule therapeutics in rare diseases and immunological conditions, that target solute carriers, complex-bound proteins, and GPCRs.

Headquartered in Oxford, UK, OMass has raised over $150M (£119M) from a top-tier international investor syndicate, including Syncona, Oxford Science Enterprises, GV, Northpond Ventures, and Sanofi Ventures.

To learn more, please visit www.omass.com. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About ARC Oxford Campus

Owned by Brookfield, ARC Oxford is part of ARC’s science and tech network of clusters, that includes Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, ARC West London and ARC Uxbridge. The company has five million sq. ft of development potential planned across the UK’s Golden Triangle, with three million sq. ft planned at the 700-acre Harwell site.

To learn more, please visit https://www.arcgroup.io/oxford/. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.