OMass Therapeutics Appoints Dr Jon Roffey as Vice President, Head of Medicinal Chemistry

Oxford, United Kingdom – 15 July 2022 – OMass Therapeutics (‘OMass’, or ‘the Company’), a biotechnology company that identifies medicines against highly validated target ecosystems, today announces the appointment of Jon Roffey Ph.D. as Vice President (VP), Head of Medicinal Chemistry and a member of the Company’s leadership team.

Dr Roffey brings over 20 years of drug discovery experience gained in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, where he contributed to the development of multiple candidate drugs and late-stage clinical assets. He has extensive experience in a variety of therapeutic areas, including central nervous system, oncology and metabolic disorders across a range of therapeutic modalities.

He joins from Nanna Therapeutics, where he was Head of Drug Discovery and led a portfolio of mitochondrial targeted programs to treat rare diseases.  Prior to that, he was Director of Chemistry at Azeria Therapeutics, a company he helped spin-out from the University of Cambridge.   Previously, at Cancer Research Technology, he was a Senior Group Leader and at Spirogen, he led and established the antibody drug conjugate programme, which led to the clinical development of vadastuximab talirine and rovalpituzumab tesirine.  He started his Medicinal chemistry career at Vernalis, as a Senior Scientist working on a variety of GPCR targets.

Dr Roffey has a first-class degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in organic synthesis from the University of Loughborough, UK and has co-authored over 50 patent applications and papers.

Jon Roffey Ph.D., Vice President, Head of Medicinal Chemistry at OMass Therapeutics said: “OMass Therapeutics is pioneering a new approach to drug discovery and its OdyssION™ platform opens new possibilities to develop drugs against hard to drug membrane or complex-bound proteins. OMass has the potential to positively impact patients’ lives in multiple disease areas and I look forward to working with the team at this exciting stage of the Company’s development.”

Welcoming Jon to the team, Ros Degan Chief Executive Officer of OMass Therapeutics, said: “With our recent $100m series B financing, we are advancing multiple programs in parallel, with a focus on becoming a clinical stage company. Jon’s expertise in medicinal chemistry and in bringing multiple products to the clinic will be invaluable as we progress our programmes through early discovery and into lead optimisation and candidate selection.”

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About OMass Therapeutics

OMass Therapeutics is a biotechnology company discovering medicines against highly-validated target ecosystems, such as membrane proteins or intracellular complexes. The company’s unique OdyssION™ technology platform comprises novel biochemistry techniques, next-generation native mass spectrometry, and custom chemistry. This allows OMass to interrogate not just the target, but also the interaction of the target with its native ecosystem, separate from the confounding complexity of the cell. The result is cell-system fidelity with cell-free precision. OMass is advancing a pipeline of small molecule therapeutics in rare diseases and immunological conditions, therapeutics that target solute carriers, complex-bound proteins, and GPCRs.

Headquartered in Oxford, UK, OMass has raised over $150M (£119M) from a top-tier international investor syndicate, including Syncona, Oxford Science Enterprises, GV, Northpond Ventures, and Sanofi Ventures.

To learn more, please visit www.omass.com. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.