Here we provide highlights of our progress and achievements during the year.

The past twelve months have included many notable achievements and represent an exciting chapter as we continue our journey to ultimately bring new medicines to patients.

Reflecting on the year, CEO Ros Deegan said: “The investment raised in our series B has enabled the company to grow and continue to make great progress in our science and pipeline programs. Despite the challenges from Covid, we have emerged as a strong and cohesive team. Our achievements in 2022 are a recognition of the hard work that our employees put in throughout the year and I am excited to see and looking forward to what 2023 may bring!”

Below we have outlined some of the highlights of the year.

Funding to continue our progress

This year, we closed a $100m financing, the largest series B for a UK-based small molecule company. The international syndicate of top-tier life science investors was led by new investors, GV, Northpond Ventures and Sanofi Ventures, with existing investors, Syncona, Oxford Science Enterprises and Oxford University also participating.

As part of the financing, we were delighted to welcome Scott Biller, Ph.D., Executive Venture Partner at GV, Diana Bernstein, Ph.D., Vice President at Northpond Ventures, and Laia Crespo, Ph.D., Partner at Sanofi Ventures, to the OMass Board of Directors. Our first in-person board meeting was held in November.

Advancing our science

Our latest round of financing has allowed us to continue our journey to improve the lives of patients with rare diseases and immunological conditions. We have made notable progress across our pipeline, including our gasdermin program entering lead optimisation, our SLC15A4 program entering hit to lead, and the first in vivo data for our MC2 antagonist.

We have also continued to expand the capabilities of our OdyssION^TM drug discovery platform and demonstrating how native mass spectrometry (MS) can aid in the development of new therapeutics against hard to drug targets (watch our animation to find out more!). This was covered in a number of trade magazine reviews including Drug Discovery World and Manufacturing Chemist  as well as in prominent peer-reviewed journals. This included a publication in Nature Chemistry, which highlighted how native MS can interrogate the pharmacology of a receptor and a publication by our founder Professor Dame Carol Robinson’s group in Nature, which demonstrated how native MS is able to capture GPCR signalling in a native membrane environment.

To continue to support our scientific programs, and to incorporate an external perspective on how to continue to develop our platform, we were delighted to formalise our Scientific Advisory Board, chaired by Professor Robinson, welcoming Professor Chas Bountra, James Naismith and John Yates. Our inaugural meeting was held in June of this year.

Scaling our team

This year, it has been important to continue to develop our culture as we continue to grow (last employee count at 54!). We did a values refresh to define and articulate exactly what it means to be an OMassian. Everyone at OMass was involved, so we know they’re an authentic representation of what we do and what we stand for.

Company feedback has endorsed our people strategy and we are proud that our employees continue to think this is a great place to work (97% of employees would recommend OMass as a great place to work). This supportive culture has enabled us to retain staff and seamlessly add new team members. We’re always trying to improve, but we do celebrate the diversity we already have; we are proud no single gender dominates at our company, and at our last count, our employees came from over 20 birth countries.

We were also pleased to gather everyone together for our first company all-hands meeting, enjoying our post-covid freedom to gather and celebrate our successes (see pictures!)

Recognising our success

Our progress and success has also been recognised externally. We are proud that our CEO Ros Deegan was named as a 2022 In Vivo Rising Leader. Informa’s In Vivo’s 30 Rising Leaders spotlights entrepreneurs and innovators who represent the next wave of creativity in healthcare. The list includes academics, CEOs of small and mid-sized companies, rising employees in larger biopharma and medtech businesses, as well as others doing exciting work to drive better health initiatives worldwide.

We were also shortlisted as a finalist for several awards during the year, including Scrip Magazine’s Private Financing Deal of the Year and LSX’s European Lifestars Awards for Series B Financing and Women-led Business of the Year to name a few. Whilst we were not chosen as the winner for these awards, we were delighted to win the Oxford Science Park Innovation Award at the Oxfordshire Business Awards.

As we reflect on 2022, we look forward to an exciting and rewarding year ahead in 2023!