OMass Therapeutics, a biotechnology company, has announced its founder Professor Dame Carol Robinson has been awarded the 2022 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the 2022 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry.
The awards recognise Professor Robinson’s contributions to the field of mass spectrometry and for establishing it as a method to analyse proteins in their native state. These discoveries have form the basis of her company’s technology platform, OdyssION.
The Louis-Jeantet Foundation’s mission is to further the cause of medicine and awards annual prizes to encourage and finance the best European research projects in medicine. The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia presents awards for “outstanding achievements in science, engineering and industry”, and is reportedly the oldest comprehensive science and technology awards programme in the USA.
Professor Dame Carol Robinson, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board and Founder, said: “2021 has been an amazing year for science and I am honored to have received these two awards alongside the mRNA COVID vaccine heroes. I congratulate all awardees and thank both the Franklin Institute and the Louis-Jeantet Foundation for their recognition.
“Mass spectrometry can be an under recognised area of science, but I truly believe that it will play a major role in drug discovery for years to come. Through my academic role and as a founder of and consultant to OMass, I hope that my discoveries can have a positive impact on the lives of patients.”
Native mass spectrometry is a core element of OMass’s proprietary technology platform, OdyssION, which also integrates novel biochemistry techniques and custom chemistry. It allows OMass to interrogate not just a drug target, the company says, but also how the protein interacts with its native ecosystem, separate from the confounding complexity of the cell. The company is advancing a pipeline of small molecule therapeutics in rare diseases and immunological conditions, targeting solute carriers, complex-bound proteins and GPCRs.
