Public Funding for Omass Therapeutics Limited

Membrane proteins represent the largest class of drug targets. Developing new ways to study these targets is therefore of paramount importance in drug development programmes. This project addresses this need by developing and applying novel technology to understand drug binding to membrane proteins in the most natural environment possible. Our innovation consists of a stage upon which we place cell membranes or mimetics, a jet of solvent is directed at the membranes and an inlet samples the particles, producing a stream of charged particles for study in a mass spectrometer. The key advantage of this approach is that it enables us to add drugs to the target in a natural membrane or mimetic, not possible previously. In addition, it addresses the limitations of current methods as it allows high-throughput analyses. Drugs to be tested can be added to the jet of solvent and directed to different parts of the membrane/ lipid bilayer preparation. As we increase the robustness of the prototype we will be able to deliver mulitiple drugs in turn, to discrete regions of the membrane preparation. During the course of this project we will develop our prototype in partnership with biotech, pharma and design engineers to bring the prototype to a state suitable for manufacture and ultimately to market. With this platform, and working with our partnership companies in biotech and pharma, we will change the way in which membrane targets are screened for small molecule binding and as such believe that the platform will become a downstream product and an essential component of many drug discovery pipelines.