Oxford, United Kingdom – 15 November 2023 – OMass Therapeutics (‘OMass’ or ‘the Company’), a biotechnology company identifying medicines against highly validated target ecosystems such as membrane proteins or intracellular complexes, today announces the appointment of Melissa Faris as Chief Business Officer, effective immediately.

Melissa joins from GSK, where she held the role of Vice President and Head of Immunology Business Development, leading a team responsible for end-to-end business development activities for immunology and infectious diseases. Prior to this she held a number of senior executive business development roles at GSK both on the buy and sell side and  brings more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry in drug discovery, development and product commercialization.

Melissa first started her career in clinical drug development at GlaxoWellcome in the US where she spent a decade leading and contributing to development programs for Respiratory medicines from Phase 1 through to registration and launch. In addition, she held a number of enterprise leadership roles internal and external to GSK, including, most recently, as a non-executive Board member for Sitryx Therapeutics.

Ros Deegan, Chief Executive Officer at OMass Therapeutics, commented: “Melissa’s broad experience in business and clinical development will be an invaluable asset for OMass as we advance our lead candidate toward IND enabling studies and continue to progress our exciting pipeline of immunology programs.

In her new role Melissa will be instrumental in ensuring OMass secures high value partnerships and other opportunities to maximize the value of our assets and drug discovery platform, OdyssION™.”

Melissa Faris, Chief Business Officer of OMass Therapeutics, added: “I am thrilled to be joining OMass Therapeutics at such an exciting time in the Company’s development.  I look forward to working with the leadership team and Board to maximize the value of our proprietary platform and assets.”

Melissa holds a Doctorate of Pharmacy from The Ohio State University and a Bachelor’s of Pharmacy from West Virginia University. Following her doctorate, she completed a specialty residency in infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

-ENDS-

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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 $160M (£129M) from a top-tier international investor syndicate, including Syncona, Oxford Science Enterprises, GV, Northpond Ventures, Sanofi Ventures and British Patient Capital.

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