OmniAb, Inc. (Nasdaq: OABI) held its first Research & Technology virtual event earlier today, during which members of the management team reviewed the Company’s technology offerings and highlighted the launch of OmnidAb, the industry’s first and only transgenic chicken producing single domain antibodies (sdAbs). The archived webcast and speaker slides will be available on the Investors portion of OmniAb’s website.
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“Since the completion of the transaction that created OmniAb as an independent public company almost exactly one year ago, we’ve made tremendous progress in building out our business and research teams and increasing the number of active partner programs. With the infrastructure in place to support our highly scalable business model, OmniAb is well positioned for significant growth with a differentiated platform as we facilitate the discovery and development of novel therapeutic antibodies by our partners,” said Matt Foehr, Chief Executive Officer of OmniAb.
“Our technologies are making important impacts on our partners’ R&D pipelines and are having positive impacts on patients’ lives. OmnidAb is an exciting new technology that is now being used by our partners. We look forward to additional new technologies and partner experience enhancements launching next year and beyond as our internal innovation engine is becoming more efficient,” he added.
Today’s virtual event featured presentations from senior management with business updates and an overview of various technology platforms, including the newly-launched OmnidAb platform.
“We continue to innovate around our technology offerings. The latest innovation is OmnidAb, a platform for single domain antibodies based upon a human VH scaffold that affinity matures in a chicken host environment to provide a functionally diverse immune repertoire unavailable from mammalian systems. OmnidAb is the first and only transgenic chicken producing sdAbs and creates the opportunity to significantly improve discovery approaches at a time when there is growing industry interest in the modality,” said Bill Harriman, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Antibody Discovery of OmniAb.
OmnidAb™ Technology Launch
Management provided an overview of the OmnidAb transgenic chicken novel host system that builds upon the success of its OmniChicken legacy. Highlights included:
- OmnidAb transgenic chickens express an optimized single-domain humanized framework, which can be utilized as modular building blocks, unlocking the versatility to “fit the biology” for a wide range of human disease, and are well suited to support a variety of therapeutic modalities.
- OmnidAb antibodies target distinct epitopes and have favorable developability profiles with high expression levels in mammalian cells.
- The current predominant process to discover therapeutic sdAbs requires large animal immunization and engineering – including humanization and optimization – adding time and increasing risks. Built-in use of an optimized human scaffold combined with efficient in vivo affinity maturation in OmnidAb minimizes the need for downstream engineering.
- Distinct from traditional antibodies, sdAbs produced by OmnidAb chickens have a compact format that opens significant new opportunities. Given their unique physical properties, they can be leveraged for alternate routes of administration, diagnostic applications and therapeutic approaches beyond what is typically possible with conventional antibodies.
Enhancing Discovery with OmniDeep™
Management also discussed the ability to enhance discovery capabilities with OmniDeep, a suite of in silico tools for therapeutic discovery and optimization that is woven through OmniAb’s various technologies. Building upon the Biological Intelligence™ (BI) embedded within the diverse antibody repertoires from OmniAb animals, OmniDeep leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to assist antibody discovery and optimization. The combination of BI and AI offers partners new large-scale discovery workflows and optimization tools for their discovery campaigns.
The Ion Channel Opportunity
Lastly, management highlighted differentiated core capabilities to target ion channels and transporters, as they are key components in various biological processes.
OmniAb’s ion channel technologies, coupled with its experienced team of ion drug discovery experts, offers a differentiated capability to advance the discovery of this class of therapeutics. The company has key collaborations for these high-value targets with GSK and Roche. OmniAb differentiates its ion channel discovery platform via continuous expansion and development of cutting-edge technologies, including custom cell lines, high-throughput electrophysiology, proprietary X-ray fluorescence, structure-based optimization leveraging cryo-EM and molecular dynamics, deep learning models and more. Because key areas for ion channels are buried in the membrane and can be challenging to reach, the smaller size of OmnidAb and OmniTaur™ binding domains compared to conventional antibodies provides a new approach to ion channel therapeutics.
About OmniAb®
OmniAb’s discovery platform provides pharmaceutical industry partners access to diverse antibody repertoires and high-throughput screening technologies to enable discovery of next-generation therapeutics. At the heart of the OmniAb platform is the Biological Intelligence™ (BI) of our proprietary transgenic animals, including OmniRat®, OmniChicken® and OmniMouse® that have been genetically modified to generate antibodies with human sequences to facilitate development of human therapeutic candidates. OmniFlic® (transgenic rat) and OmniClic® (transgenic chicken) address industry needs for bispecific antibody applications through a common light chain approach, and OmniTaur™ features unique structural attributes of cow antibodies for complex targets. OmnidAb™ is an in vivo platform for single domain antibodies based upon a human VH scaffold that affinity matures in a chicken host environment to provide a functionally diverse immune repertoire unavailable from mammalian systems. We believe the OmniAb animals comprise the most diverse host systems available in the industry and they are optimally leveraged through computational antigen design and immunization methods, paired with high-throughput single B cell phenotypic screening and mining of next-generation sequencing datasets with custom algorithms to identify fully human antibodies with superior performance and developability characteristics. These proprietary technologies are joined with and leverage OmniDeep™, which is a suite of in silico tools for therapeutic discovery and optimization that are woven throughout OmniAb’s various technologies and capabilities. Additionally, an established core competency focused on ion channels and transporters further differentiates OmniAb’s technology and creates opportunities in many emerging target classes. OmniAb antibodies have been leveraged across modalities, including bispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates and others.
The OmniAb suite of technologies span from BI-powered repertoire generation to cutting-edge antibody discovery and optimization offering a highly efficient and customizable end-to-end solution for the growing discovery needs of the global pharmaceutical industry.
For more information, please visit www.omniab.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
OmniAb cautions you that statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “could,” “intend,” “target,” “project,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or continue” and similar expressions, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations and include, but are not limited to: the growth prospects of our business and the discovery needs of the pharmaceutical industry; the scalability of our business model based on our current infrastructure; the expected launch and performance of, our technologies and partner experience enhancements and the opportunities they may create; and the ability to add new partners and programs. Actual results may differ from those set forth in this press release due to the risks and uncertainties inherent in our business, including, without limitation: our future success is dependent on acceptance of our technology platform and technologies by new and existing partners, as well as on the eventual development, approval and commercialization of products developed by our partners for which we have no control over the development plan, regulatory strategy or commercialization efforts; biopharmaceutical development is inherently uncertain; risks arising from changes in technology; the competitive environment in the life sciences and biotechnology platform market; our failure to maintain, protect and defend our intellectual property rights; difficulties with performance of third parties we will rely on for our business; regulatory developments in the United States and foreign countries; unstable market and economic conditions, may have serious adverse consequences on our business, financial condition and stock price; and other risks described in our prior press releases and filings with the SEC, including under the heading “Risk Factors” in our annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent filings with the SEC. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date hereof. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, which is made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
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