University of Oxford spin-out OMass Therapeutics has moved into a new purpose-designed research and development facility at ARC Oxford.
The biotech firm has signed a deal with Brookfield’s life sciences arm, Advanced Research Clusters, the operator of the business park, to occupy 16,000 sq ft in Building 4000 on a 10-year lease.
The relocation has enabled the company to bring research teams from its former sites into one building. OMass previously occupied 5,000 sq ft in the Schrodinger Building at Oxford Science Park and 4,200 sq ft in the Discovery Building at BioCity Nottingham.
Miguel Silva, strategy director at OMass, said: “From the building perspective, it has been really nice to just have the whole company together under one roof, because it is something that we have all missed since we started the two sites.”
The move to a bigger facility also supports OMass’s next phase of growth as it expects to expand its headcount, which currently stands at 55 employees. Most recently, the company appointed Winfried Barchet as its vice president of immunology.
Silva said: “We are a very early-stage company, with most of our work concentrated on research and development – people working in the lab and doing experiments take up most of the space because we need lots of machinery and different types of equipment to do experiments. But as we grow, we will start to add new functions into the company.
“The idea was to have the flagship site for the long term and for it to be able to progress with the company as we keep adding new things that we need. Right now, all of our programmes are in the preclinical stage. But once we start doing clinical trials, we will need people to work in development. Then, once our products get closer to approval, we will need people to do regulatory and commercial work as well.”
Building 4000 has been refurbished by ARC to meet OMass’s scientific and technical requirements, including air handling for mass spectrometry and cell culture, and new facilities for chemistry and structural biology to support drug discovery. Office space has also been designed to enable collaborative working both on-site and virtually.
“There is limited lab space in Oxford, so finding a new facility was not as easy as you might think,” Silva said. “We wanted to remain within the Oxford area to stay close to our roots, as we are a spin-out from the University of Oxford, but we also wanted to ensure that we were utilising all of the Oxford cluster benefits that come along with this, retaining the talent that already lives here and making sure that we are able to recruit new people.”
OMass secured £100.7m in later-stage venture capital in April last year, the largest fundraising deal recorded in Oxford in 2022, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Brookfield recently rebranded the site as ARC Oxford from Oxford Business Park, and committed to invest more than £1bn in the region by the late 2020s.
Other occupiers at ARC Oxford include Gilead’s MiroBio, Accession Therapeutics, Perspectum, Ivy Farm and Oxford Biomedica.
David Williams, director of leasing at ARC Oxford, said: “The new building keeps [OMass] at the heart of a vibrant ecosystem of innovative companies in Oxford and offers access to communal, social and co-working spaces and a curated programme of events for campus members.”
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