Order-made Medical Research Inc.

OMR Story

OMR was founded with the aim of generating revolutionary therapeutic antibodies for cancer treatment in 2012, where succeeded in research background in cancer virus proliferation research at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in yeast genome research at RIKEN Institute, and in genome biology research at Tokyo University of Science. OMR’s prominent antibody engineering technologies are generated to establish technology platform for genomic drug discovery throughout technology development at Alberta Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, Riken Institute and other research projects in Japan. 

Drug discovery and clinical development for anti-cancer small-molecules are carried out by pharmaceutical companies with large-scale screening facilities and human clinical trials costing by hundreds million USD, or sometimes by billions USD or more. On the other hands, therapeutic antibodies can be created using endogenous animal immune system, called somatic hypermutation and other immune responses, so that even small biotech companies can tackle with the subject adequately. Indeed, most of the research on therapeutic antibody creation has been carried out in small biotech companies in US and Europe in the past, and it is customary for big bio-pharma to take over clinical lead antibodies that created by biotech companies.

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OMR has been established in the basis of research capabilities for strategic drug discovery after human genome analysis and for antibody engineering technologies. The DNA microarray technology, which become popular method in 21st century, and the next generation sequencing technology (NGS), that can analyze human whole genome fast and low cost, have drastically improved genomic analysis and research, and have make possible to explore and identify new target molecules for therapeutic antibodies with extremely faster and effective. In the end, antibody engineering technologies with capturing disease specific immunogenicity change, including gene mutation, is the key to generate prominent therapeutic antibody throughout genomic analysis.

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Currently, around 60 antibodies have been approved as therapeutic antibodies and about 50 antibodies are under clinical development in phase 3, but most of them are created around 20 target molecules, so that it seems that disease associated target molecules for therapeutic antibodies are deficient in clinical setting. However, the fact of matters is that antibody engineering technologies to generate prominent therapeutic antibodies for target molecules are limited, as it is now, over 200 therapeutic antibodies against only 20 validated target molecules are under clinical trials. 

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OMR has worked on this subject. As a first achievement, OMR has made it possible to generate antibodies for multi-path-trans membrane protein, which has been considered as quite a challenge for therapeutic antibody generation. Furthermore, OMR is challenging to generate internalization antibodies with targeting intracellular molecules that have been considered impossible to be targeted with therapeutic antibodies, and to generate tissue-selective antibodies with capturing disease associate immunogenicity changes, which can be discovered using the latest immune-genomics analysis.

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Oncology is OMR’s top priority disease area, but applications for therapeutic antibodies are not limited to oncology fields. We think other therapeutic area will be challenged to generate prominent therapeutic antibodies under strategic alliance with biotech, pharmaceutical and bio-pharma in Japan and overseas.  We promote therapeutic antibodies R&D activities for unmet medical needs,  and bring hope for patients who are suffering from intractable diseases with putting together whole organization of OMR.

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OMR emphasizes establishing R&D networks. OMR also emphasizes collaboration with academia and industries in different fields; medical institutions such as hospitals and medical departments where accumulate human clinical samples, new bio and diagnosis technologies, bioinformatics and AI technologies which drastically improve drug discovery efficiency. Global R&D network establishment is extremely important for small biotech company like us to generate innovation sustainably. 

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Order-made medical research Inc.

Founder and CEO of OMR Inc.
 

Yasufumi Murakam