OMass Therapeutics secures $100M to develop drug discovery platform

OMass Therapeutics, the Oxford Science Park based biotechnology company, has secured $100 million (£75.5 million) in a series B financing round.

The international syndicate was led by new investors, GV – the venture capital arm of Alphabet Inc, Northpond Ventures and Sanofi Ventures, with existing investors, Syncona, Oxford Science Enterprises and Oxford University also participating.

Originally spun out of Oxford University in 2016, OMass has commercialised Professor Dame Carol Robinson’s breakthrough research in native mass spectrometry to develop its proprietary drug discovery platform.

The platform integrates novel biochemistry techniques, mass spectrometry and custom chemistry to interrogate protein interactions within its native ecosystem.

Ros Deegan, Chief Executive of OMass, said: “The completion of this oversubscribed round with such highcalibre investors is recognition of the significance of our OdyssION platform. We have already made significant progress against highly validated but previously undruggable targets and can now accelerate them towards clinical development while continuing to expand our pipeline.”

Invatech sells care homes medication admin system to Person Centred Software

Bristol-based health tech pioneer Invatech Health has sold its care homes electronic medication administration record system, Atlas.

The ground-breaking software has been bought for an undisclosed sum by Guildford-based care home management specialists Person Centred Software.

The acquisition marks the end of a 20

Bottle plant investment will double chemical product o er at Olpro

The fast-growing Worcester-based outdoor brand Olpro is set to double the number of chemical products it sells after building a new bottling and labelling plant.

Before investing in the new machinery, Olpro, would outsource the supply of tens of thousands of chemical products before selling them on Olpro’s e-commerce website. The new investment enables the company to create double the number of chemical products in-house over the next 12 months.

Olpro is already well known in the outdoor industry for selling chemical products designed for cleaning surfaces at campsites, and more recently for chemical products which can be used to re-proof products that have lost their waterproof coating over time.

Olpro received 40 per cent of the funding towards the new machinery from Worcestershire County Council through its Here2Help Business grant.

year journey for Invatech Health CEO Tariq Muhammad, a pharmacist who started working on care homes back in 2002 and first conceived the concept of an electronic medicines system for care homes in 2006.

Following the transition of Atlas to new ownership, Bristol-based Invatech Health will concentrate on further growth of Titan, its new software for pharmacy management.

Daniel Walton, Founder of Olpro said: “Bringing more production closer to our head o ce is a fundamental part of our business strategy, as it helps us to become more sustainable in an environmental sense, but also gives us more opportunity to be innovative and have greater control over improving the quality of our products in a way that continues to be cost-e ective for our customers.”