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Omnia’s project receives support from The Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation

By 28 de March de 2012November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 28.03.2012

Omnia’s project receives support from The Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation

The Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation announced this week the funding of a one year project with Omnia Molecular –located at the Barcelona Science Park– which aims to identify new treatments for TB and in particular MDR‐TB. Omnia will apply its patented technology platform to a subset of GSK's compound collection and will make use of assets that GSK has made available to the WIPO Re:Search Consortium.


The goal is to identify compounds that share a mechanism of action that could enable Omnia to further optimize their activity against TB. The funds provided by the Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation will support a visiting scientist to come to GlaxoSmithKline’s R&D centre in Tres Cantos (Spain) to pursue their project as part of a Drug Discovery team and to tap into GSK’s resources and facilities.

“This collaboration will be an important validation of Omnia´s technology, which has the potential to dramatically reduce development timelines for novel TB treatments by optimizing and de‐risking drug candidates in the pre‐clinical phase of development” said Dr. Lluis Ribas, founder and CSO of Omnia Molecular.

“TB remains a global scourge which requires concerted effort to develop effective medications. Through this interaction we hope that harnessing complementary technologies will accelerate the process of discovery and drug optimisation” said Professor Leszek Borysiewicz, Trustee and Chair of the Governing Board, Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation and Vice‐Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,

Omnia Molecular was founded in 2005 by Dr. Lluis Ribas and is a spin‐off from his work as principle investigator at the Barcelona Institute for the Research in Biomedicine after 18 years experience with Aminoacyl‐tRNA synthetases at the Massachusettes Instutute of Technology (93‐97) and The Scripps Research Institute (97‐03).

Omnia Molecular designs and develops novel anti‐infectives targeted at difficult‐to‐treat infections in hospital, in particular those caused by pathogens that have developed resistance to existing antibiotics. Omnia’s business model is to co‐develop with pharma industry partners and out‐license pre‐clinical candidates after proof of efficacy in animal infection models.

Candidate compounds are synthesized and optimized using a proprietary biotech platform that measures drug effect in human cells in the pre‐clinical phase of development. Omnia´s competitive advantage is to shorten development time‐lines and reduce risk in the later stages of development.

The Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation is focused on providing funding and support for scientists, academics and institutions to develop and advance new ideas that could lead to new medicines to treat diseases of the developing world. Researchers are invited to submit projects for collaboration and funding, to be reviewed by the Foundation’s Governing Board and Trustees.