Open Monoclonal Technology Announces 2nd Academic OmniAb™ Alliance


PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 30, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Open Monoclonal Technology, Inc. (OMT) today announced an alliance that provides the Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT) with access to OMT’s OmniRat®, OmniMouse® and OmniFlic™ human antibody generation platforms. BCRT is supported by Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the States of Berlin and Brandenburg. The mission of the BCRT is to translate new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches from bench-to-bedside. The institution will be OMT’s 2nd academic partner with such unlimited OmniAb™ access.

Professor, Hans-Dieter Volk, MD, said “Human monoclonal antibodies enable completely new options for targeted therapy. The BCRT at the Charité will implement a core unit to generate antibodies against novel targets by using OMT’s innovative technology platforms particularly for therapies in immunological diseases, regenerative medicine and oncology.”

Dr. Roland Buelow, OMT founder and CEO, continued “The BCRT becomes OMT’s second academic and 18th global partner with unlimited platform access. OMT looks forward to combining the world-class biological-clinical research of the BCRT with OMT’s industry-leading transgenic animal platforms to make further strides in treating challenging human diseases.”

About OMT Group

Open Monoclonal Technology, Inc. (OMT), OMT Therapeutics, Inc. (OMTT), and Recombinant Antibody Technology, Ltd. (RAT) are leaders in genetic engineering of animals for the generation of mono-, bi- and poly-specific human therapeutic antibodies, naturally optimized human antibodies®, and the only group in the world with four transgenic animal platforms.

OmniRat® is the industry’s first human monoclonal antibody technology based on rats. It has a complete immune system with a diverse antibody repertoire and generates antibodies with human idiotypes as well as wild-type animals make rat antibodies. OmniMouse® is a transgenic mouse that complements OmniRat and expands epitope coverage. OmniFlic is an engineered rat with a fixed light chain for development of bispecific, fully human antibodies. Full-length human antibodies from these three animals are called OmniAb. UniRat is the first transgenic rat generating human UniAb™ heavy chain-only antibodies and nanobodies for polyspecific applications.

All four platforms use patented technology, have broad freedom to operate and deliver fully human antibodies with high affinity, specificity, expression, solubility and stability. Animals are hosted in master colonies globally by Charles River Labs and Taconic with backups at Genentech and Roche. OmniAb and UniAb antibody discovery services are available via Antibody Solutions, OMTT and Sage Labs in the US, Aldevron and Taconic in Europe and WuXi AppTec in Asia.

OmniAb and UniAb antibodies are available for all applications, indications and territories. Current partners include Amgen, ARMO, Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies, Caltech, Celgene, Chugai, Five Prime, Genmab, Genentech, Gloria, HanAll, Janssen, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, Roche, Seattle Genetics, Symphogen, University of Nottingham and some undisclosed biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

For more information, please visit www.omtinc.net, www.omttherapeutics.com, www.ratltd.net or contact Brian Lundstrom, Chief Business Officer, at +1-775-420-7750 or bl@omtinc.net.