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The biotech enterprise Omnia Molecular, which operates from the PCB-Santander Bioincubator at the Barcelona Science Park and was founded by IRB Barcelona researcher Lluís Ribas de Pouplana, has closed funding negotiations headed by “Caixa Capital Risc”, the risk capital section of “la Caixa", worth 2.1M€ . This round of funding, which is supported by the Empresa Nacional de Innovación (ENISA), has also involved the founding partners of Omnia Molecular (Lluís Ribas, Juan Gargallo y Eugeni Roure) and the new managerial team, comprised by Raphael Klingmann, who serves as CEO, and Dariusch Mani.
Omnia Molecular is devoted to the discovery and development of new antibiotics. The company has a proprietary screening platform to detect not only antibiotic activity but also the potential toxicity of new compounds, thereby accelerating the time from discovery to development of efficient non-toxic drugs. The objective of this new round of funding is to back the development of its most promising compounds and enter pre-clinical trails with several of these in 2012. The first trials in humans are planned for 2014. Once their efficacy in animal models has been proved, some of these compounds will be available for co-development with partners from the pharmaceutical industry. Omnia Molecular has been supported by “Caixa Capital Risc” since 2007.
Since 2008 “Omnia Molecular” has validated its technology for use in distinct pathogens, thus demonstrating its technical viability, and has fine-tuned assays for research into new drugs. At present the company has three optimized assays to discover compounds with therapeutic potential, and also has agreements with several companies and organizations to exploit their compound libraries for molecules of interest.
IRB Barcelona, of which Omnia Molecular is a spin-off, has as one of its missions the promotion of innovation and the transfer of technology to the private sector.
See PCB news: http://www.pcb.ub.es/homePCB/live/ct/o190.asp?nid=3704
About IRB Barcelona
The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) pursues a society free of disease. To this end, it conducts multidisciplinary research of excellence to cure cancer and other diseases linked to ageing. It establishes technology transfer agreements with the pharmaceutical industry and major hospitals to bring research results closer to society, and organises a range of science outreach activities to engage the public in an open dialogue. IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 researchers and more than 30 nationalities. Recognised as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence since 2011, IRB Barcelona is a CERCA centre and member of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).
