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OMass Therapeutics partners with Genentech to advance innovative treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, leveraging their unique OdyssION drug discovery platform.
Genentech receives the rights to develop and commercialize OMass’ oral small molecule program for inflammatory bowel disease.
OMass Therapeutics announced it has entered an exclusive license agreement and collaboration with Genentech (a member of the Roche Group) for the rights to commercialize and develop its preclinical oral small molecule program aimed at treating inflammatory bowel disease.
Boris L. Zaïtra, head of Roche corporate business development, touched on the collaboration, saying, "There are nearly eight million people living with IBD who are in need of innovative treatment approaches. Despite recent advancements, there is still a high unmet medical need which fuels our commitment to partnering with companies such as OMass Therapeutics focused on innovation to accelerate potentially transformative medicines and advance science."1
The terms of the collaboration agreement ensures that OMass receives an upfront payment of $20 million, along with additional potential preclinical, development, commercial, and net sales milestone payments reaching upwards of $400 million. OMass additionally receives eligibility for tiered royalties on net sales.
OMass was granted the lead for initial preclinical development of the program until candidate selection, while Genentech’s main responsibility focuses on clinical development, regulatory activities, manufacturing, and commercialization.
Genentech and OMass’ collaboration, follows additional partnership deals made by Roche this year, as back in March of this year Roche reached a $5.3 billion agreement with Zealand Pharma for the exclusive rights to Petrelinitide. Additionally in May, Genentech reached an agreement with Orionis Biosciences totaling $2 billion, for its small molecule molecular glue designed for cancer indications.
OdyssION serves as OMass Therapeutics’ proprietary drug discovery platform, identifying medicines against intractable and or inadequately drugged membrane along with complex-bound proteins, while also allowing OMass to investigate the methods in which a protein interacts with its native ecosystem separately from the confounding complexity of the cell.3
OdyssION employs biochemistry techniques, next generation native mass spectrometry, and custom chemistry, allowing OMass to preserve a target’s partner such as lipids and other endogenous regulatory molecules.3 Biology is then distilled to its essential elements in physical interactions within a native ecosystem. These interactions are measured through high resolution native Mass spectrometry technology, pioneered by OMass’ founder, professor Dame Carol Robinson. Professor Carol’s achievements received recognition in 2022, when she was awarded the 2022 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the 2022 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry.
OMass listed the following as the three critical benefits of using the OdyssION platform.
“Using our OdyssION platform, we’ve been able to make significant progress on this novel first-in-class target with a differentiated mechanism of action in inflammatory bowel disease,” said Ros Deegan, CEO of OMass Therapeutics. “Genentech brings a strong legacy of innovation in immunology and world class scientific expertise, making them an ideal partner for this program. We are delighted to be partnering with them and build on the progress we have made to date.”1
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